The Day of the Jackal, Season One (2024)
I’m always a sucker for a good hitman/assassin movie, and this British TV series is a remake of one of the most famous ones. The Jackal (Eddie Redmayne) is a meticulous and unstoppable hitman who specializes in killing seemingly unreachable targets with his preternatural sniper skills. Those skills land him on the radar of Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch), a dogged and determined MI6 agent. What ensues is a game of cat-and-mouse between the two as the Jackal begins planning his next mission: the assassination of a billionaire who plans to release technology that could up-end the world order. Meanwhile, events in both the Jackal and Pullman’s personal lives complicate their respective missions even as a much bigger conspiracy looms in the background. Like a good heist movie, a lot of the fun of watching The Day of the Jackal is seeing how the Jackal plots his missions while evading detection and arrest. The series gets bogged down, however, when it delves into the two leads’ personal lives or tries to draw parallels between their obsessive personalities. It also engages in some hand-waving, encouraging you to overlook a few unexplained twists and turns that — although they don’t ruin the series — do fall apart when you stop to think about them for 30 seconds. A second season has already been announced, and I plan on watching it.
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