THE talent behind the successful TV drama Killing Eve, which is returning to UK viewers for a second series, said its success has been due to "breaking the framework" of screen dramas.
Killing Eve series 2, after being shown on BBC America, will shortly be available to view on iPlayer.
Sally Woodward Gentle, the executive producer of the show, which stars Sandra Oh (who plays secret agent Eve) and Jodie Comer (who is the killer Villanelle), said that producers didn't want a cliched "sexy assassin that goes around killing men with her thighs."
Its acclaimed and award-laden first series was based on Luke Jennings's Codename Villanelle novella series and was developed for television by Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who also wrote the lauded Fleabag.
The second series has been written by Emerald Fennel, with Waller-Birdge involved at an executive level.
Ms Woodward Gentle told BBC Radio 4: "We read Luke Jenning's novellas, and we love a female assassin, and a lot of people love a female assassin but we realised there was quite a lot out there.
"I'd met the wonderful Phoebe Waller Bridge and it was about putting those together. But I think we thought we might fly in under the radar, and some people might get it and some people wouldn't."
She added: "What we didn't want was a sexy, sexy assassin that goes around killing men with her thighs.
"That's was something we decided against.
"But there is the sexual charge, between her and Eve, these two women who didn't know each other existed, and accidentally come across each other and have this extraordinary mutual attraction."
She added: "We didn't go around saying we were going to break the mold, we just wrote and thought about extraordinary women as human beings, multi-layered, multi-faceted, complex, mucked up, flawed and morally grey, rather than having tropes."
The actress Fiona Shaw, who plays an MI6 boss in the show, said: "I had no idea when I read the script it was going to be as globally a sensation as it has been, but when I read it, I knew it didn't feel or sound
or read like anything else I had read.
"For that reason I thought it was would a strange, niche, thing that would please a certain amount of people...but it success has been breathtaking and unlike anything else I have been involved in.
Shaw added: "It's about good and evil, but you have here an assassin who is a psychopath, who is the most charming person you could ever meet and wears the most beautiful dresses.
"So the contradiction makes the mind spin."
She added: "Some of the pleasure and genius of the writing, is that we had about two or three episodes, it was very dry...and then Phoebe Waller-Bridge was able to spin the character and make them literally the opposite of what you expected them to be.
"That is phenomenal for an actors and thrilling for the audience.
"I think it released the entire framework of writing, we didn't realise we were controlled by these tropes.
"There's always a structure in society, somehow I think Killing Eve has broken right through that."
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