Sweetpea review – Ella Purnell’s deathly dull serial killer show reeks of cowardly decision-making

This insipid, humourless adaptation of CJ Skuse’s blackly comic Sweetpea books has been stripped of everything good. It seems to drag on forever

I was delighted when I heard that CJ Skuse’s Sweetpea (the first in a series of five books) was being adapted for television. The entire series is wonderful, but the first is the one to beat. The story of Rhiannon, a serial killer of (mostly) bad (mostly) men, Sweetpea hits the ground running and never lets up, blackly comic, as brutal in its social commentary as our girl is with a knife, and with a wit just as lovingly whetted. Rhiannon is that rarest of creatures: an unapologetic female protagonist written just as unapologetically by her female creator.

Her backstory is such that you can’t be sure whether nature or nurture has made her a psychopath, but psychopath she surely is. At least 82% anyway, according to a BuzzFeed quiz she takes. Rhiannon’s voice sings from the page, the plot delivers twist after turn, with the suspense mounting along with the body count, and there isn’t a wasted scene or word. Please do read them – they will do your heart (especially if it is female and full of suppressed rage) good.

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