FEW new TV shows have been as much hyped as Killing Eve - the new project from Fleabag writer and creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge. For those not familiar with Waller-Bridge's brilliant dark comedy about an angry, grief-riddled woman navigating her way through modern day London, it's simply one of the finest series of recent years, so the speculation about what the talented 33-year-old was going to do next was at least justified.

Thankfully she's repaid the interest with Killing Eve - a new twist on the spy drama that is more Quentin Tarantino than John Le Carre and has enough laughs and cartoon-like violence to keep you hooked after the first brilliant episode which is both on-the-edge-of-your-seat entertaining and very funny.

The premise of Killing Eve is all about the chase—a deadly game of cat and mouse between two women who begin following and hunting one another all over Europe. When bored MI5 agent Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh) figures out psychopathic hitwoman Villanelle (Jodie Comer) is the one responsible for a string of murders, she begins tracking her down. Topically, it's after a Russian politician is murdered, that Eve is tasked with protecting the only witness and soon after she finds herself on a collision course with the violent Villanelle.

Polastri is an instantly likeable spin on the cliched detective persona: she spends most of the initial action horribly hungover and bickering with her boss (the brilliant David Haig), but she's intelligent too and quickly works out that assassin in question is a woman leading to an offer she can't refuse to become a very James Bond-esque secret agent.

25-year-old Liverpudlian Comer is equally brilliant as Villanelle, exuding lethal sex appeal as she swans around Paris to a stunning soundtrack of 60s French pop. Each one of her set-pieces is coolly filmed with drama and tension (think Tarantino again - especially his work on Inglorious Basterds) and when she employs a huge hairpin to dispatch one of her victims it is certainly not for the squeamish.

A startling and fresh take on the cop/assassin genre, on this evidence Killing Eve could be Waller-Bridge's second hit in a row and a welcome dash of style in the post-summer listings.