Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Until I Kill You’ On BritBox, About A Woman Who Waits Out A Man That Admitted To Killing His Ex

Even when a show says “This is a true story” before it starts, we are always a bit wary that it’s actually the true story. Things always get changed, whether its characters on the margins or situations that are compressed or modified to heighten drama. The legal rancor around Baby Reindeer reminds us of how dangerous it is to say a show is a true story. A new BritBox limited series makes pains to explain that its story is true, but a few things are changed. Either way, it’s a hell of an intriguing story.

UNTIL I KILL YOU: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: After a disclaimer that states “This is a true story,” then explains that some characters and situations are changed, we hear an alarm clock go off. A woman, in a sleeping bag on the floor of her flat, picks up a travel clock and turns off the alarm.

The Gist: “Kentish Town, London, 1991.” Delia Balmer (Anna Maxwell Martin) rides her bike to work at a local hospital; she’s a contract nurse, and her quirkiness hasn’t made her many friends. One person who likes her is a front-desk attendant named Leah (Amanda Wilkin), who invites her out to the pub to have drinks with her and the nurses.

While Delia is dancing like she doesn’t care who’s watching, she notices a man watching her. She stays back to meet him; his name is John Sweeny (Shaun Evans), and she immediately invites him back to her place. She talks about her travels, the knickknacks she has accumulated from those travels, and the reason why she has minimal furniture. It looks like sparks are about to fly when John accidentally kicks over a cup of tea onto her rug; as she mops it up, she suddenly tells him that the night is over.

She regrets how she acted, and she decides to write him a letter (yes, a letter) to explain herself and ask him out again. Delia’s a patient sort; she finally sees him in the pub weeks later and hands him the note, and they end up going to his place. This is when they find out that he’s six years younger than she is, but’s also the first time they sleep together.

In the meantime, the father of a missing woman talks to the police in Amsterdam; not long after, the mutilated body of a blonde-haired Jane Doe is found stuffed in a suitcase, and the police try to find out who she is.

As the relationship between Delia and John progresses, she feels his DGAF attitude opens her up. They end up moving in with each other, and John, who’s a carpenter, builds them an actual bed. He shows her a drawing that he made of one of his exes, who was a model; the drawing looks eerily similar to the photo that the father of the missing woman in Amsterdam had.

When they travel to his hometown for Christmas, Delia finds out that John was married when he was younger and had a couple of kids, something he conveniently neglected to mention. Yet she stays with him. After he builds the bed, Delia finds herself struggling for her life; John has his arms wrapped around her so tightly as he sleeps that she can’t breathe.

Things start to sour around the two year mark, as he starts being distant and critical of Delia. At a certain point, she decides it’s time that he moves out. She repeatedly asks him but he won’t leave. After he comes back from a job in Germany, she orders him out, but before he leaves, she finds out something about his relationship with the ex he drew that might put her in danger.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? It could be the “true story” aspect of both stories, but Until I Kill You reminds us of Baby Reindeer.

Our Take: Created by Nick Stevens based on Balmer’s book Living With A Serial Killer, the story of Until I Kill You plays out relatively slowly, even though the first episode takes big jumps in time as the relationship between Delia and John advances, then goes south. But, because of the performance of Martin as Delia, we were OK taking this ride into abject terror with Delia, even if doesn’t get to the real meat of the story until the very end of the episode.

Stevens wants to establish that Delia wasn’t necessarily a loner but was definitely someone who marched to the beat of her own drum. We know for a fact that when you embrace your own quirks, it’s hard to find someone who will embrace them and show you their full personality, as well.

So during the almost two years that Delia knows John, Stevens tries to show that she isn’t necessarily desperate for him to stick around, but is also determined to make something less than ideal work because she knows that there isn’t a hell of a lot else out there. But he also wants to establish that she’s not a pushover, and the fact that she gets him to admit to her that he killed and chopped up his previous girlfriend makes for quite a powerful scene.

The idea is that she escapes his torture and captivity but he slips through her fingers; when he is arrested for another murder years later, though, Delia is ready to tell her story and what he admitted to her. That takes strength and the ability to play the long game, which is shown at the start of their relationship; she waits to see him again before passing him her apology note.

This all comes out in Martin’s performance. Yes, Evans is an appropriately menacing presence as John, but we’ve seen characters like him before, who start charming but whose real evil comes out the longer he’s around. Martin, however, shows all the nuances of who Delia is, why she stayed with John despite his verbal abuse, but why she finally stood up for herself, even when it puts her life in danger.

Sex and Skin: Any sex in the story is implied.

Parting Shot: Delia doesn’t show up for work, and we see that John has tied her up to their bed.

Sleeper Star: Amanda Wilkin’s character Leah provides just enough support for Delia to help her have the confidence to emphatically tell John to move out.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Leah talks to Delia about breaking up with a controlling boyfriend, Delia asks if that’s why she became a lesbian.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Until I Kill You is both quirky and harrowing, a scary story about a woman who found herself dating a serial killer but somehow came out of it alive. The performance of Anna Maxwell Martin brings out all of those story nuances, and makes the limited series a fascinating watch.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.