Sweetpea
★★★★
Binge, October 10

Fans of Ella Purnell, whose career has taken off recently after starring roles in Sweetbitter, Yellowjackets and Fallout, might be surprised to learn that despite her Hollywood credentials, she’s actually British. Her new black comedy, set in the UK, and on which she’s both star and executive producer, has Purnell return to her native accent playing a woman who is so fed up with being overlooked, she turns to murder. Serial murder, in fact.

She plays Rhiannon Lewis, a mousy twentysomething receptionist (Purnell has never looked so dowdy) at the local newspaper, where the staff barely acknowledge her and her boss Norman (Ted Lasso’s Jeremy Swift) seemingly doesn’t even know her name – he refers to her, mostly when he wants her to make him cups of tea, as “sweetpea”.

The first episode opens with Rhiannon on a crowded bus, mentally making a list of “people I’d love to kill: man-spreaders; Donna in the mini-market; Norman at work for failing to acknowledge my potential …” And the list goes on. We’ve all been there, but few of us (I hope) act on our inner voice’s fantasies.

Rhiannon is tired of being invisible, and then things get worse when her dad dies, followed soon after by her beloved dog, Tink. Then she learns that her distant sister has plans to sell the family home to Rhiannon’s brutal bully from high school, Julia (Mood’s Nicole Lecky), who is now a successful real estate agent.

Julia and her friends made Rhiannon’s life so miserable at school that she literally tore her hair out, and had to wear a wig, resulting in Rhiannon making herself smaller, turning into something of a wallflower.

Having to deal with Julia, her dad’s employee Craig (Jon Pointing), a one-time love interest who now wants to buy out the company, and her growing rage at being taken for granted at work, Rhiannon, on an angry whim, begins a murder spree using her late dad’s treasured pocket knife.