Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Starz
All six episodes of Starz and Sky Atlantic’s extremely black comedy Sweetpea begin with one chilling line of dialogue: “People I’d love to kill.”
In the first episode, which premiered Oct. 10, the show’s protagonist, Rhiannon Lewis (Fallout's Ella Purnell, her eyes enormous), lists a few who have done her a particular unkindness: manspreaders, surly Donna in the mini market, Norman from work, “people who have sex with you and then only reply to your texts with emojis.” It’s the type of theoretical fantasizing many of us have caught ourselves doing on our worst days, but Rhiannon is always having her worst day, and it’s about to become everyone’s problem.
The show, an adaptation of CJ Skuse’s 2017 novel of the same name, begins with the death of Rhiannon’s father, which sends Rhiannon herself into a tailspin. She’s never been particularly great at advocating for her own self-worth, and feels even more invisible at her thankless receptionist job at the local newspaper. Her glamorous sister is hell-bent on selling their father’s house, where Rhiannon has also lived all this time, and, to make matters even worse, the realtor in charge of it all is mean-girl supreme Julia Blenkingsopp (Nicôle Lecky), her old school bully. It’s enough to drive someone to murder. And murder, Rhiannon soon discovers, looks remarkably good on her.
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