Honey: this flirty, kinky Killing Eve prequel should have been called Carré on Spying

Honey, a BBC One prequel to Killing Eve, explores the origins of Carolyn Martens in East Berlin, 1982. The show, created by Emma Moran, follows a young Martha Schmitt as a honeypot agent in the GDR, balancing a mission with a chaotic personal life.

The series is set in a period where the East German government ran an army of citizen informants. Martha, smuggled into the eastern sector, is tasked with seducing well-placed men to obtain compromising photographs and sensitive information for the West.

Her handler is Anderson, played by Rory Kinnear, and she is partnered with an American agent, the chauvinist Kurt Fischer, portrayed by Nate Mann. The show is a handsomely shot period piece with a very un-period tone.

Style and tone

Honey is a bright and flirty show, filled with gags, pop songs and knowingly anachronistic dialogue. The series offers not sense but sensibility, prioritizing entertainment over historical accuracy.

Supporting characters make meta-textual gags, such as a worker at a sausage factory commenting on a murdered colleague. Martha strides around in a bright miniskirt and thigh-highs, looking more like she is coming home from a fun night out than a harrowing day in the GDR.

Spy purists may be left out in the cold. The show is more Doctor Who than Das Boot, with characters meeting in private rooms and playing hammy shagging noises from a cassette player to cover the sound of their debriefs.

The Killing Eve universe

The eastern bloc serves as a model box for the show to populate with its real interests: dressing up, banter, pop-feminism, queerness and light kink. The latter is mostly served up in the person of Friedrich Baumann, a classically repressed Oberstleutnant spy-hunter.

Baumann is the most interesting part of the show, played by Jannis Niewöhner, an actual German whose native accent highlights the fruity efforts some of the other actors are forced to make. His scenes have a wisp of sexual charge, giving the series something meaty to chew on.

The show is so brazen these squeaky seams become part of its camp joy. If you are looking for Anthony Beevor or Anne Applebaum-esque vérité, keep moving.

A sweet spot

Ann Skelly is bushy-tailed as Martha, and Anderson is played with brilliant stuffiness by Rory Kinnear. The striking resemblance between Nate Mann's Kurt and Aidan Turner's character in Rivals is useful, as both are shows committed to fun skulduggeries, shagging and big wigs.

The author concludes that Honey could have been called Carré on Spying, a title that fits the show's focus on style and camp joy over historical realism.