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Sweetpea Season 2: Ella Purnell Still Learning as a Serial Killer

STARZ released a spotlight video for Sweetpea, with Ella Purnell's Rhiannon still trying (and failing) to get the hang of serial killing.

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Article Summary

  • STARZ teases Sweetpea as Ella Purnell’s Rhiannon struggles with serial killing mishaps.
  • No Season 2 footage yet, but fans get a new, darkly funny clip from Sweetpea’s first season.
  • Season one focused on Rhiannon’s awkward rise to killer, marked by British moral dilemmas and guilt.
  • Sweetpea streams on STARZ and Sky, with Season 2’s premiere date to be revealed soon.

STARZ released a new clip from season one of their serial killer dark comedy, Sweetpea, to whet our appetite for the upcoming second season. No clips from Season Two have been released yet, as filming only recently concluded. The clip is very, very British, and your mileage may vary. In Sweetpea, Rhiannon Lewis (Purnell) doesn't make much of an impression – people walk past her in the street without a second glance. She's continually overlooked for a promotion at work, the guy she likes won't commit, and her dad is really, really sick. Then everything in her life turns upside down. Rhiannon is pushed over the edge and loses control. Suddenly, the wallflower is gone, and in its place is a young woman capable of anything… Rhiannon's life transforms as she steps into a new, intoxicating power, but can she keep her killer secret? That first clip shows her still trying and failing to get the hang of being a serial killer, failing altogether in a scene that's supposed to be kind of funny but is really kind of dull, despite Purnell's brilliant performance.

Sweetpea: Ella Purnell Wrapped, Promises "Bonkers" Second Season
Image: STARZ

Season one of Sweetpea was a totally made-up prequel to CJ Skuse's first novel in the series and was a rather slow and redundant origin story about how Rhiannon discovered her taste for killing assholes. It lacked the first book's gleeful dark comedy because you could sense the writers' very wishy-washy British moral hand-wringing over the very obvious point that murdering people is bad and we really shouldn't do it. It seems to miss that people watch shows like Sweetpea and Dexter to live vicariously and gasp at the antiheroes doing things they wouldn't dream of in real life. Moral handwringing and middle-class guilt are very British hang-ups prevalent in every British crime show. Your tolerance for that guilt-tripping may vary. Hopefully, season two will finally lean into what made the original books – more than three of them – so popular in the UK in the first place.

Sweetpea is available to stream on Starz in the US and Sky in the UK. The premiere date for Season Two will be announced in due course.

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Adi TantimedhAbout Adi Tantimedh

Adi Tantimedh is a filmmaker, screenwriter and novelist. He wrote radio plays for the BBC Radio, “JLA: Age of Wonder” for DC Comics, “Blackshirt” for Moonstone Books, and “La Muse” for Big Head Press. Most recently, he wrote “Her Nightly Embrace”, “Her Beautiful Monster” and “Her Fugitive Heart”, a trilogy of novels featuring a British-Indian private eye published by Atria Books, a division Simon & Schuster.
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