"You have to tick every box for a piece of music to work in cinema or TV," says DJ turned film composer David Holmes. "It can't just almost work: it has to slot in perfectly."

As post-episode surges towards song-seeking app Shazam testify, Holmes and music supervisor Catherine Grieves left no box unmarked with their BAFTA-winning music for Seasons 1 and 2 of BBC America's Killing Eve. Adapted from Luke Jennings' Codename Villanelle novellas by head-writers Phoebe Waller-Bridge (S1) and Emerald Fennell (S2), the Emmy-winning spy series has established itself as a swaggering, slippery, playful and punchy thriller of cat/mouse obsession like no other. And it comes with killer soundtracks to match, modern classics of pick'n'mix curation cut from the cloth of cinematic style but tailored with a moody, mischievous vivacity of their own.

If both soundtracks testify to Holmes and Grieves' taste and care, they also uphold the kind of intuitive emotional connections that make the best soundtracks sing. "It's a feeling you have, you just know when something's working," says Holmes. "It was like that every time we dropped the needle on Killing Eve." All the proof is, indeed, just a needle-drop away.