Gloria Hunniford criticises 'Killing Eve' for glamourising violence

TV legend Gloria Hunniford is not happy with Killing Eve writer Phoebe Waller-Bridge calling her violent lead character “refreshing and oddly empowering.”

Killing Eve follows an assassin known only as Villanelle (Jodie Comer) as she kills people to order, and works her way ever nearer MI5 officer, Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh). The show has contained a lot of graphic violence.

Veteran TV and radio presenter Hunniford made her comments about Killing Eve to the Daily Mail, saying: “When you have seen real violence in the streets like I did in Ireland this is not TV, this is not drama, this is real life.”

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Hunniford covered The Troubles in 1970s Northern Ireland as a TV reporter for the BBC and ITV in Belfast. “I was a news reporter and saw the real thing,” she said.

“I saw bad things,” Hunniford added. “I once saw a man die before my eyes. It doesn’t empower women at all. Violence is violence. This is not show business! This is life. I wouldn’t watch sex or violence.”

Read more: It was empowering to show women being violent, says Phoebe Waller-Bridge

Phoebe Waller-Bridge has said that viewers are tired of seeing women being “brutalised” on the small screen.

The writer said it was “refreshing” to depict violent women on Killing Eve.

She told The Andrew Marr Show: “I think people are slightly exhausted by seeing women being brutalised on screen.

“We’re being allowed to see women on slabs the whole time and being beaten up, and in some ways that’s important to see because it shows the brutality against women.

“Seeing women being violent, the flip-side of that is refreshing and oddly empowering.”

Killing Eve returns to American television on 7 April, but no U.K. air date has been confirmed as yet.