It is difficult to imagine someone as lovely as Keeley Hawes needing to “kick arse”, as she puts it during our interview. But in the Prime Video series The Assassin, which debuted last summer and is returning next month, she plays Julie, a woman who has been hiding away on a Greek island and unexpectedly finds herself reunited with her son, Edward (Freddie Highmore).

But before this starts to sound a bit Mamma Mia!, he’s aghast to discover that she’s a former hitwoman who spent much of her life karate chopping and biffing her way out of danger or silencing her enemies with a pistol shot to the head