Have you ever felt overlooked? Silenced? Belittled? Well, Sky’s new ‘coming of rage’ series, Sweetpea, will strike a chord with you. It definitely did with me. Many of us know what being the shy, quiet girl can feel like, especially as a young woman, and how our confidence can be ground down into nothing by those who think they’re more powerful or important than us.

Sweetpea’s Rhiannon Lewis (played by Yellowjackets’s Ella Purnell), however, is here to change everyone’s opinion on quiet girls – and in a big way. The office wallflower is sick of people walking by her without a second glance; she’s tired of being overlooked for promotions at work; she wants the guy she’s seeing to commit already; she’s fed up of dutifully listening to the dreams of everyone else around her and wants her school bully to leave her alone. So, she makes a kill list. Naturally.

This thriller (an adaptation of CJ Skuse’s 2017 novel) takes the traditional tropes of the serial killer and completely reverses it by giving the audience a serial killer in the form of a quiet and psychotic anti-hero who kills the people who fail to notice her. The brilliance of this show is that yes, Rhiannon, is a serial killer and commits terrible violence on those around her but you can’t help but relate or feel some empathy towards her, especially as a woman pushed to the absolute brink and loses control. If anything, you find yourself sort of siding with Sweetpea’s twisted but wholesome anti-hero. Because we’ve all been there – just without the murderous rage.

The series also stars Mood’s Nicôle Lecky as Rhiannon’s bully, Julia; Bridgerton’s Calam Lynch as her colleague, AJ; as well as Leah Harvey, Tim Samuels, Elliot Cable and Dino Kelly.

Ella Purnell’s portrayal of Rhiannon is the standout performance of the show. The emotion delivered in her facial expressions and body movements was so raw and moving and acutely conveys how deeply overlooked Rhiannon is; the anger and vengeance slowly bubbling away under the surface.  I caught myself audibly gasping multiple times throughout the first episode when the audience saw and heard just some of the things Rhiannon was dealing with in her life. There’s a particular scene in which Rhiannon puts herself forward for a promotion at work and her boss puts her down in the most belittling and condescending way that really shows you how worn down she is.

As the series goes on and Rhiannon begins to get noticed, this core vengeance within her only gets stronger and more bloody. Purnell is a true scream queen in the making and I, for one, cannot wait to see what she does next – the bloodier, the better.

Images: Sky