TV Review: The Day of the Jackal has action, pace and emotional ...
The Day of the Jackal (Sky Atlantic and NOW) isn’t good for the planet. But it’s a winner for the viewer.
This assassin-chase caper is an old story, based on a Frederick Forsyth book and 1973 film that zig-zagged across the best bits of Europe, glamorising assassination for an entire generation. That’s possibly why I love the 2024 version.
It’s odd to get Hollywood royalty Eddie Redmayne as your lead man (Jackal) and only give him about three lines in the first episode. But it works here, because we get to watch him at work.
I found it weirdly soothing to watch him adjust the sights on his rifle in Munich, before dispatching a politician three kilometres away.
I liked the way he more or less turned his rifle into a suitcase before fleeing Munich for a trip across Europe that took in Nuremberg, Paris, and rural Cadiz.
All good city-break eye candy as the winter draws in on us.
Meanwhile, back in London, MI6 weapons expert Bianca (played by Lashana Lynch) has noticed something from the CCTV footage of Jackal fleeing Munich.
She concludes he must have used a bespoke rifle and that could only have been made by one man, a former Loyalist paramilitary in Belfast.
This second leg of the story is more banal and domestic.
Instead of swanning around Instagram-friendly parts of Europe in expensive Audis, Bianca hops on a flight to Belfast and misses her daughter’s parent-teacher meeting.
The result is an emotional depth to go alongside the Jason Bourne-style adrenaline scenes.
But even they’re riveting. Eddie Redmayne is intriguing, all bony-faced and intense, like Cillian Murphy on an angry day.
It’s good we’re not told a lot about him up front, leaving us to wonder how he ended up as a bloodless killer.
It could be for the money. In the first episode, he meets someone in a remote Swedish bird-sanctuary (lot of air-miles for Jackal again) and quotes them €100m to kill the owner of a revolutionary new tech company.
But we also get a glimpse of a private life in Cadiz, so there is probably more to come from that as well.
They gave Redmayne £1m an episode for this, and it’s money well spent.
Eddie can carry two minutes of tense silence as he gauges the wind speed in a skyscraper in Bavaria.
Lynch is convincing as an ambitious cop with a human side.
The action rarely relents and Europe has never looked better. Give it a watch.
