The story of an overlooked wallflower getting her sweet revenge on a world of bullies sounds like a satisfying, if overdone, premise. But Sweetpea delivers something more sour.
The British six-part show is an adaptation of CJ Skuse’s Sweetpea, following meek introvert anti-heroine Rhiannon (Ella Purnell) as she acts our her murderous revenge fantasies.
She feels like a ghost, unseen by her sister, colleagues and small-town acquaintances. She has plenty of targets, certain that just about everyone is to blame for her dissatisfaction.
"People I’d love to kill," Rhiannon announces in a voice-over before listing off the grievances ranging from impolite retail workers and a misogynistic boss to school-day psychological torture and her absent mother.
Her personal space is encroached on by men. Her boss at the small town newspaper uses her as a coat rack and ignores her hidden talents (she fancies herself a reporter, not an administrative assistant). Someone she slept with now ignores her.
Worst of all though, she is haunted by the bullying of her childhood. Her bully, former classmate Julia Blenkingsopp (Nicole Lecky), tormented young Rhiannon so much that she pulled her own hair out. Now, Julia is a successful estate agent with a "perfect little house", nice car and "Ken doll" partner.
Rhiannon reaches a breaking point when her father and dog die — the only things she loved. She finds catharsis in the violent chance killing of a drunk obnoxious lad late at night. With a healthy dose of symbolism, she uses her dead father’s knife to repeatedly stab the victim. And at the climax of the act, she is finally "seen".
What follows in Sweetpea, billed as a dark comedy thriller, is dully dark, eventually thrilling and not very funny.
The first few episodes fall flat. The performance by Purnell (Fallout, Yellowjackets) is one redeeming quality. She can act the highs and lows of a wide-eyed scared little girl turning to wide-eyed killing.
But Rhiannon isn’t very likeable or funny. Her satisfaction from killing comes across as smugness and it’s unclear if this is an intentional direction by the show.
The character’s grievances are at times trivial. Social nuisances are muddled in with very real victimhood. And so it all seems very petty — a far cry from the feminist revenge and rebellion found elsewhere in the genre.
It’s hard to cheer on Rhiannon. You end up feeling sorry for her, trapped by her killing spree rather than empowered by it — and perhaps that’s the point.
The original novel is probably a better place to explore the complexities of misplaced rage at the patriarchy or the false equivalence of a checkout lady being rude and sexual assault. Or the blurred line between vigilantes and psychopaths. The show could have leant into all this — and there’s comedy to be found there too. Instead, it takes for granted that Rhiannon’s victims deserve her wrath.
Regardless, the killing works fine for Rhiannon. She feels empowered. She starts being noticed and brightens up after acting out her fantasies. She wears makeup and her hair gets better. The males who ignored her before find her suddenly attractive. She gets laid — or rather does the laying. She starts excelling at her job at the newspaper.
Sweetpea gets better in its second half. The confused pathos remains and the comedy is still lacking but the prospect that Rhiannon’s mask will fall and her killings exposed is thrilling enough. A cat and mouse game develops when the police start investigating the murders (no-one would ever suspect shy little Rhiannon!). Junior detective Marina (strong performance from Leah Harvey) has her suspicions but is dismissed by her superiors, in an interesting parallel to Rhiannon’s story. And Rhiannon’s job at the newspaper adds to the suspense, as she reports on the killings and butts heads with senior reporter Jeff Barker (played by a funny Dustin Demri-Burns).
More importantly, Rhiannon’s childhood nemesis, Julia, enters the frame and is fleshed out as a character worth more than just the protagonist’s relentless wrath. Will Rhiannon get her revenge on Julia? Will there be some sort of reconciliation or redemption for anyone? Sweetpea does get somewhere in the end, but only after wallowing in the cynical outlook of its anti-heroine, with a severe lack of joy considering the source material’s sense of humour about Rhiannon’s murderous awakening.
- Review by George Elliott. All six Sweetpea episodes are available on Neon.
