'Sweetpea' Is a Twisted, Spooky Seasonal Delight: TV Review

Cnext to the tyrant. This youthful sadist derives his hobby from humiliation, intimidation, and inflicting physical and emotional pain. In many cases, they are so effective in gaslighting that they can avoid a sentence that could even amount to arrest. Adults comfort young victims with assurances that bullies are living out their glory days in the locker room and can only expect misfortune. But what is a person to do when she grows up, is stuck in the claustrophobic town where she was a teenage pariah, takes a soul-crushing job, watches her family crumble around her… and her abuser, still thriving, just makes it worse?

This is the mystery facing Rhiannon Lewis, the vile antihero of this dark, wickedly funny British thriller. Sweet peathe first episode of which is now streaming on the Starz app ahead of its October 10 linear premiere. Played with nervous intensity by breakout star Ella Purnell Yellow jackets AND FallRhiannon works as a receptionist at a local newspaper – where she is so invisible that the editor (Jeremy Swift from Ted Lasso) when entering the office, he puts his coat on his head. Her interest in the vacant junior reporter position is treated as a joke. And her personal life is an even bigger disaster. Deprived of friends and romantic prospects, she watches helplessly as her sick father dies in the hospital. Then, her sister Seren (Alexandra Dowling) arrives from abroad for the funeral with a plan to sell the family home from Rhiannon. It just so happens that her chosen real estate agent is the person most responsible for making Rhiannon such a gentle, repressed person: her high school bully, Julia (MoodNicole Lecky).

Episodes Sweet pea open with Purnell's voiceover, listing who Rhiannon would like to kill and why. Julia's crime? – Don't focus on school like bullies should. Instead, the girl whose constant molestation bothered Rhiannon so much that she pulled out her hair and had to buy a wig – which Julia had ripped off her head at the school disco – grew up to be one of the most prominent brokers around, smirking. from her company's ubiquitous billboards. She has the perfect home and the perfect husband (Dino Kelly). She walks around town in flashy dress blouses with the same clique of mean girls that made her their queen in high school. And now he has the nerve to take from Rhiannon the only thing she has left of her beloved father?

It's enough to make an emotionally fragile person break down – and Rhiannon does, in spectacularly brutal fashion. When, in a fit of misdirected rage, he commits his first murder, the case makes headlines; Suddenly, our girl is trying to both cover her tracks and prove that she deserves a promotion by reporting a crime. Then something unexpected starts to happen. Through her sneaking, scheming, and, yes, killing, Rhiannon develops something of a sense of self-worth. He demands respect at work. She seduces her father's handsome former employee (Jon Pointing) while being discreetly pursued by a wisecracking co-worker (Calam Lynch) who may be a better candidate. When a man squeezes in next to her on the bus, she strokes his leg, watches him flinch, and mutters, “Oh, I'm sorry. Did I make you feel uncomfortable?”

Billed as a “story of rage” and based on the novel by CJ Skuse, Sweet pea begins with an insightful character study of a woman who, stunted by an unhappy adolescence, does something terrible in a desperate attempt to take control of a life in which she has always felt powerless. In a performance that convincingly combines wildness, vulnerability and weirdness, Purnell plays something that is fundamentally the opposite of her Yellow jackets character – a prom queen type who feels ill-prepared for life in the brutal wilderness. Our sympathy for Rhiannon gives her violence a cathartic effect, sowing a discomfort in our own pleasure that grows without making the show any less entertaining as her murder spree continues throughout the six-episode season.

As Julia gets closer to selling her house, the balance of power between stalker and victim shifts. Rhiannon convinces herself that she is transforming her victimhood into heroism, ridding the world of people who harass, ridicule, and otherwise brutalize her vulnerable peers. But Julia has a different opinion. “You're not a victim,” he sneers. “You're a fucking loser who blames everyone for your shitty life.” Is it really Julia's fault that Rhiannon hasn't outgrown the awkward stage? And what does Rhiannon really know about Julia's life now, based on a few billboards and a few tense personal encounters? Victim and bully it turns out that these roles are not separable. Aggression is cyclical. There is some truth in this cliché hurt people, hurt people.

These ideas may seem didactic on paper, but on screen they are not. Despite all his care, Sweet pea has the electricity of a twisted revenge thriller – making it perfect for fans Dead to me Or Bad sistersor anyone else looking for a spooky season with more layered characters, sharp humor, and moral complexity than Ryan Murphy's latest Gore Festival. While its setting contains some familiar elements, the series takes on a character over the course of a few episodes as Purnell and Lecky spend more screen time together and a character who shares Rhiannon's outcast perspective (Marina Leah Harvey) begins investigating the murders.

The season ends with one of the best cliffhanger finales I've seen in a while. Rich fodder for an even crazier second season, which I hope we get to see, it's also a reality check about our affinity for an aspiring serial killer masquerading as a young reporter (or is it the other way around?). To get viewers on Rhiannon's side early, Sweet pea finds a rich source of tension in the question of whether we are watching a wallflower bloom or a monster rise.