Emmy nominees to watch before the ceremony: Sandra Oh and 'Killing Eve'

This week I'm taking a look back at key nominees for the forthcoming 70th Annual Primetime Emmy Awards (NBC/4, Sept. 17). "Killing Eve" has two major nominations — a best actress nod for Sandra Oh and an outstanding writer/drama nod for series scribe Phoebe Waller-Bridge.

"Killing Eve" is the best show you're not watching. The reason: You pretty much can't.

Until recently, BBC America had streamed episodes of the Emmy-nominated inaugural season on its website, but no longer. Video-on-demand episodes are also no longer available. Why? Except to say "this could change," a BBC America spokeswoman did not elaborate.

Fortunately, there are options. For example, all eight episodes are available at Amazon Prime for $2.99 per episode. Worth it? If you want to see what the fuss is about, sure. If you want to read what the fuss is about, you've come to the right place.

Let's start with Waller-Bridge, whose one-woman play-turned-Amazon series "Fleabag" is scabrously funny and raggedly bitter. The tone, or balance, seems just about right for "Eve" as well. When desk-riding MI5 agent Eve Polastri (Oh) becomes catatonically bored from routine, she begins to nurse an obsession. Could there be a female assassin at work in Europe? Her superior, Carolyn Martens (veteran actress Fiona Shaw) buys in. You meet the assassin in the first frame. She is Villanelle (Jodie Comer), and for her first dastardly act — a rather minor one in the overall scheme of things here — she spills ice cream on a little girl.

The performances are memorable. The list begins with Shaw, who doesn’t do much TV, and “Eve” offers a glimpse of what we’ve been missing. Canadian-born Oh hasn’t done much TV either since leaving “Grey’s Anatomy” in 2014. She’s just about perfect as the brainy rogue agent who fumbles her way along in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse.

To crib from my review back in April, Comer's Villanelle is a full-blown psychopath, and she happens to be especially lethal when bored. She has an unusually low threshold for boredom: Mere seconds after killing someone, the light of joy goes out of her eyes, and an existential pall settles over her. “Now what, or who?” those inviting hazel eyes seem to say. Viewers never have to wait long for an answer.

Villanelle gets the best lines, best scenes and even the best locales: Vienna, Paris and Tuscany in the pilot alone. She’s a monster who knows her way around Europe and around her own head. Like Eve — the good yin to her evil yang — Villanelle has facets. She’s smart, creative, intuitive and witty. She’s not one for small talk either. “Are you always like this?” she reproaches a particularly chatty bad guy, just before ending the conversation in the most efficient way she can.

There’s an easy temptation to see a little bit of Fleabag in Villanelle — minus, naturally, the homicidal penchant. But that’s too easy: There’s a little bit of Fleabag in Eve, too. What is obvious is that Waller-Bridge had more fun writing for Villanelle than anyone else in this series.

Season 2 began filming in London in July. It arrives in 2019, but let's hope we can watch, or re-watch, the first one in the meantime.

By Verne J Gay

Verne.Gay@newsday.com@vernejgay

Verne J Gay is the television critic