Killing Eve: Luke Jennings's Villanelle Novellas vs the BBC Series

Before Killing Eve was a BBC/AMC phenomenon, Luke Jennings published four novellas — the Codename Villanelle series — about an assassin and the intelligence officer pursuing her. Phoebe Waller-Bridge adapted the first novella for television, and the show became one of the decade’s defining dramas. The books are shorter, stranger, and worth reading even if you know the series by heart.

The Villanelle Novellas

Originally published as e-novellas before being collected in print:

1. Codename Villanelle (2018) — also published as Killing Eve: Villanelle

2. No Tomorrow (2018) — also Killing Eve: No Tomorrow

3. Shanghai (2019) — also Killing Eve: Shanghai
4. Endgame (2020) — also Killing Eve: Endgame

The complete Villanelle series is on the series page.

Each novella is short — 150 to 200 pages — and can be read in a few hours. The four together make roughly one full-length novel.

The Premise

Villanelle is a psychopathic assassin employed by a shadowy criminal organisation. Eve Polastri is a British intelligence officer who becomes obsessed with tracking her. Their mutual fixation drives the story — part spy thriller, part dark comedy, with an explicitly sexual tension that the TV series emphasised and the novels handle more obliquely.

Books vs TV: A Different Experience

The novellas are tighter and more oblique than the show. Jennings’s Villanelle is colder than Jodie Comer’s performance — genuinely psychopathic rather than charismatic. Eve’s obsession with Villanelle is present but less mutual in the early books. The tone is drier and the violence more clinical.

Season 1 of Killing Eve (BBC, 2018) closely adapts the first novella but with Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s voice overlaid. The black comedy, the fashion obsession, the specific quality of the cat-and-mouse dynamic — these are as much Waller-Bridge’s creation as Jennings’s.

Jodie Comer’s Villanelle is so definitive that reading the novellas after watching the show requires an adjustment — the character on the page is noticeably cooler and less theatrical.

Seasons 2–4 diverge substantially from the remaining novellas. Different writers took over the show each season (Emerald Fennell for S2, Suzanne Heathcote for S3, Laura Neal for S4), and the show became its own increasingly complicated creature.

The show’s Season 4 ending was deeply divisive. Jennings’s novella Endgame ends differently and, many readers feel, more satisfyingly.

Which to Read First

If you haven’t seen the show: start with the novellas. They’re fast, and having a version of the characters that isn’t Jodie Comer/Sandra Oh gives you a different relationship with the TV adaptation.

If you’ve seen all four seasons: the novellas are worth reading to experience a colder, more restrained version of the story — and for a different ending to Villanelle’s arc.

Luke Jennings Beyond Villanelle

Jennings is primarily known as a dance critic for The Observer — Killing Eve was an unusual departure. He has not published further crime fiction since Endgame.