Eve Myles has a wide, sunny smile on her face, and she’s talking to me about serial killers. The 46-year-old Welsh actor, who rose to fame on the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood, has made a lunge for the macabre with her latest project, the Paramount+ series The Crow Girl. In it, she plays a Bristol police detective on the trail of a ritualistic murderer. “To prepare, I watched every 24 Hours in Police Custody that’s ever been made. And every forensic and serial killer show on the planet. But to be honest with you, that’s nothing to do with the job,” she laughs. “That’s kind of the stuff I watch… I’m a little bit odd like that.”
Adapted from a bestselling book series by Erik Axl Sund (the pen name of Swedish writing duo Jerker Eriksson and Hakan Axlander Sundquist), The Crow Girl follows sarcastic DCI Jeanette Kilburn (Myles), as she investigates the grisly killings of several young men. The six-part series transposes the action from Sweden to Britain, an ambitious reworking by writer Milly Thomas that “changed a lot, with the blessings of” Eriksson and Sundquist. “It’s a strong psychological piece,” Myles says, speaking to me over Zoom. “It’s about her relentless need to put the bad guy behind bars. I’ve always wanted to play a DCI – and I tried to play her with huge flaws, and huge cracks. She’s in completely over her head.”
