Deadly Women
- ‘Deadlier Than the Male’ — The Walker Brothers (1966)
- ‘Femme Fatale’ — Nico & The Velvet Underground (1967)
- ‘Killer Queen’ — Queen (1974)
- ‘Female of the Species’ — Space (1996)
The femme fatale — with an S, because there's more than one. Four songs across three decades read for the deadly woman, from The Walker Brothers to Nico and The Velvet Underground, Queen and Space.
The archetype and the psychology behind it — Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick, belladonna and the false-coloured eyes, Freddie Mercury's glamorous spy, Salomé and film noir — closing on Oscar Wilde: ‘sex is about power’. A psychiatrist and a classically trained musician on the darker cultural undercurrent of 1966 to 1996.
The fear under the femme fatale — ‘why isn't she interested in me?’
What it covers
These are recorded studio pilots. Producers and commissioners can hear the full episode and read the transcript.
For producers & commissioners