The dry-witted, somewhat sad-sack reporter at the Gazette is Rhiannon’s foil and romantic interest. Jeff is one of the few people who sees Rhiannon, genuinely sees her, even if he doesn't suspect her true nature. Their relationship is the emotional anchor of the show. It offers Rhiannon a chance at genuine connection and normalcy, creating a stakes-heavy dilemma: can she maintain a relationship while harb
The triumph of Sweetpea - Season 1 rests entirely on the shoulders of Ella Purnell. In lesser hands, Rhiannon could have become a caricature—a quirky Dexter Morgan with a British accent. But Purnell brings a palpable vulnerability to the role that makes the character’s violence feel grounded in a twisted sort of logic.
The genius of Sweetpea begins with its protagonist, Rhiannon Lewis (played with ferocious, brittle brilliance by Ella Purnell). On the surface, Rhiannon is a ghost. She is the “sweetpea” of the title—unassuming, overlooked, and painfully polite. By day, she toils as a junior reporter in a local British newspaper, an industry in decay, where her ideas are stolen, her name is misspelled on her mug, and her existence is met with casual, grinding condescension. At home, she cares for her dying father while enduring the casual cruelties of her popular, successful sister. The series’ first act is a masterclass in building a pressure cooker of micro-aggressions. Rhiannon is not a victim of grand, cinematic trauma; she is a victim of a thousand small cuts: the colleague who interrupts her, the stranger who dismisses her, the world that looks through her as if she were made of glass. Sweetpea - Season 1
, who also serves as an executive producer, the six-episode series follows a woman who discovers a lethal sense of empowerment after a lifetime of being ignored. Plot Overview
The Season 1 finale ends on a massive cliffhanger that opens up the world beyond Rhiannon’s local town. Without spoiling, the final shot suggests that Rhiannon’s problem is no longer if she will get caught, but when —and by whom. Fans are already speculating about casting for Season 2. The dry-witted, somewhat sad-sack reporter at the Gazette
: The show explores how a lifetime of being marginalized can manifest as extreme, violent rebellion.
In an era saturated with prestige television antiheroes, from Walter White’s crystalline empire to Dexter Morgan’s moral code, the archetype has become almost predictable: a brilliant, usually male, figure uses violence to resolve the gnawing dissonance between their perceived potential and their societal station. Starz’s Sweetpea , based on the novels by C.J. Skuse, takes this familiar blueprint and injects it with a venomous, feminine, and deeply contemporary dose of reality. Season 1 of Sweetpea is not merely a story of a woman who becomes a serial killer; it is a meticulously crafted, darkly comic, and ultimately tragic exploration of invisible labor, suppressed rage, and the violent reclamation of a self that society has already deemed worthless. It offers Rhiannon a chance at genuine connection
In a television landscape oversaturated with true crime documentaries, gritty police procedurals, and the endless march of "girlboss" anti-heroes, it takes something truly unique to cut through the noise. Enter , the six-part Sky Original series that landed with a delightful thud, offering a refreshing, bloody, and achingly funny take on the serial killer genre.
While Rhiannon is the sun around which the show orbits, the solar system of characters in Sweetpea - Season 1 provides the necessary friction to drive the plot.
This profound alienation is the engine of the narrative. The show cleverly subverts the typical “she was pushed too far” trope by revealing that Rhiannon’s capacity for violence was always there, a latent, simmering fury. Her first kill—a would-be street attacker—is an act of desperate self-defense. But the subsequent killing, of a smug, arrogant man who had bullied her since childhood, is something else entirely: a cold, premeditated, and deeply satisfying act of cosmic revenge. It is here that Sweetpea departs from its predecessors. Unlike Dexter, who kills to satisfy an internal “dark passenger,” or Villanelle, who kills with psychopathic glee, Rhiannon kills to be seen . She seeks, in the most horrifying way possible, a solution to the existential crisis of being a nobody. The adrenaline and power she feels as she stands over her victim is not about bloodlust; it is about the intoxicating realization that, for one fleeting moment, she is the most important person in the room.