There's no better time for a show like Sweetpea to make its arrival. Not only is this series tapping into the current stardom and fame surrounding lead actress Ella Purnell (following the success of Fallout), but it is by premise a Dexter-like revenge story about a seemingly inconsequential woman's sudden murderous tendencies. It's the perfect package for the spookiest season of the year, but is it actually worth watching?
In Sweetpea, Purnell plays the role of Rhiannon Lewis, a young woman who has had a pretty miserable and unfortunate life. Her mother left at a young age, her sister despises her, her dad and dog recently died, and everyone in the world treats her like dirt, none more so than her highschool bully Julia (Nicole Lecky) who has managed to worm her way back into her life. This compiled misery causes Rhiannon to snap and she decides to take her anger out on an unsuspecting but outright awful stranger, before doing so again, and ultimately losing control enough times to the point where the police and a particularly persistent DCI (Leah Harvey) are hot on her tail.
In a nutshell, this is Sweetpea, an almost reverse murder-mystery where instead of attempting to discover the killer, you are witnessing the murderer as she frantically attempts to cover her tracks, leading those following down false avenues, and all while fighting the urge to strike again and claim yet another victim. The main thing to add on top of this is that killing gives Rhiannon the confidence she needs to get her life in order, and ultimately leads her into a bit of a romance triangle while quickly advancing at work by imposing herself at her job and acting as an insider on the very serial killer cases she is causing, all in her duty as a local journalist.
Effectively, there are a lot of moving parts in Sweetpea and that's the point. This show has been written and developed in such a way that the viewer often feels stressed as part of their connection to Purnell's Rhiannon. This is somewhat down to the incredibly grim and dark first episode that is a case study into misery in a way I've only experienced as of late in Killers of the Flower Moon. It's here that you feel sorry for Purnell's protagonist and the sad and lonely life she lives, but then the murdering starts and it becomes a much more conflicting relationship, as on one hand she only kills bad people but on the other, murder is a clear-cut terrible action.
The interesting part of Sweetpea is that if this was an alternative story about finding a serial killer, the police would use all kinds of inventive and ingenious forensic techniques to crack the case, but Sweetpea serves a double-purpose by seeing the only competent member of the local bobbies being a misunderstood and mistreated young DCI, allowing Rhiannon to continue slipping through the cracks. It's a tale of cat and mouse, one where the cat is burdened by overseer ineptitude and the mouse is shrouded in a cloak of anonymity and implausibility.
Purnell does a wonderful job at portraying Rhiannon and giving the character personality and charm. She's an objectively awful being, so a lesser talent may fail in the task of making her a compelling lead, but Purnell succeeds and with that you can't help but want Rhiannon to avoid incarceration and to continue taking revenge on the twisted folk that impose themselves on the world. Another highlight is without a doubt Lecky's Julia who starts as the most insufferable character in the entire series and steadily develops into a bit of a moral north star, someone that you connect and really begin to care for despite her cruel past.
I do think that the show could have leaned more into a slasher mentality with more satisfying and bloody murders, as it does feel quite toned down, for the most part. Likewise, as much as the premise of the show is to have Rhiannon existing in a world of misery, a few other characters being more positive and likeable (bar simply Calam Lynch's AJ doing the heavy-lifting here) would have done wonders for making Sweetpea less of such a miserable experience most of the time. But, just because you grow to dislike the majority of the characters doesn't mean they are poorly portrayed, with Dino Kelly's Marcus, Jon Pointing's Craig, and Dustin Demri-Burns' Jeff being standouts otherwise.
While Sweetpea doesn't blow you away, it does keep you interested enough to want to know how Rhiannon will navigate these challenges she keeps imposing on herself. It's a thrilling and often therapeutic premise to see a less significant individual strike back at the world, with its violent nature being ideal for this season and time of the year. With only six-episodes to its name, it's an easy and time-considerate series, and one that sets up future episodes with a behemoth of a cliffhanger too. Sweetpea is a perfectly safe but watchable dark comedic thriller for anyone looking for something a little twisted this October.
