Some of the best TV series of this century are brilliantly rendered but nevertheless clearly of the small screen, as with a “Ted Lasso” or a “Veep” or a “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” while others are more obviously cinematic in nature, e.g., “Band of Brothers,” “Game of Thrones” and “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.” Of course it’s about the budget, but it’s also about the scope and parameters of the story arcs.
From Academy Award winner Eddie Redmayne as the titular character to the gorgeous and expansive location shoots in London, Budapest, Vienna and Croatia to the major action set pieces, the Peacock series “The Day of the Jackal” is clearly in the latter category. Clichéd as it might be to say this, each of the 10 chapters is more like a movie than an episode of television.
This is the third major adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s bestselling 1971 novel, following the classic 1973 film directed by the great Fred Zinnemann of “High Noon” and “From Here to Eternity” fame and the disappointing and very loose take from 1997 starring Richard Gere and Bruce Willis.
In this British production created by the Irish writer Ronan Bennett, we hit the ground running with a spectacularly executed premiere episode that plunges us into the lives of the two main characters: the near-mythological assassin who will come to be known as Jackal (Redmayne), and a tenacious, weapons-expert British intelligence officer named Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch), who is willing to take great personal and professional risks to identify, locate and bring down the Jackal. (This is a return to MI6 for Lynch, following her turn as the agent Nomi who is assigned the 007 number in “No Time to Die.”)
In that opening episode, we learn the Jackal is a master of disguise and accents when he impersonates a German custodian in order to pull off a job, and that he’s a marksman of extraordinary abilities, as is demonstrated when he takes out a polarizing political candidate from a distance of 3,850 meters, which if confirmed would be a world record for a sniper kill. (The deadly shot in the assassination scene is brutal and shocking and horrific.)
The Jackal’s fastidious manner and the visuals of certain scenes will remind you of Michael Fassbender in David Fincher’s “The Killer,” but whereas the latter was a deliberately anonymous fellow wearing a bucket hat and eating regularly from McDonald’s, the Jackal, while equally secretive, is stylish, proud of his insouciance and almost theatrical in his techniques and lifestyle. He’s also enormously wealthy, and when he’s not traveling the globe on his latest assignment he’s enjoying downtime at his lavish compound in Cádiz, Spain, with his gorgeous and loving wife Nuria (Úrsula Corberó) and their young son.
Of course, Nuria has no idea what her husband actually does for a living, and the same goes for Bianca’s husband Paul (Sule Rimi) and their daughter Jasmine (Florisa Kamara). Over the run of the series, we get perhaps one too many reminders of how Jackal and Bianca are different sides of the same coin; whether it’s a birthday celebration for Jackal’s son or a dinner gathering at Bianca’s place, we know the phone is going to ring, and Jackal and/or Bianca will say they have to take this call, and a moment later, they’ll be standing there with bags in hand, apologizing that they have to leave. Duty calls, and all that.
Whereas the original “Day of the Jackal” centered on a plot to assassinate the French President Charles de Gaulle, the update is about the Jackal taking a contract to kill a fictional tech entrepreneur named Ulle Dag Charles (Khalid Abdalla), who is about to unveil a revolutionary software that will reveal the true nature of the financial dealings of the world’s most powerful billionaires. (Needless to say, the world’s most powerful billionaires would like to put a stop to that plan.) With the luxury of a 10-episode run, “Day of the Jackal” has room for a number of subplots, but it never feels like the unnecessary padding that occurs in many limited series that should be more, well, limited.
In addition to the virtuoso cinematography, the crackling good dialogue and universally terrific performances, the series makes great use of music, from the Bond-esque title theme of “This Is Who I Am” by the British singer-songwriter Celeste to the perfect use of “Everything in Its Right Place” by Radiohead in the opening minutes of the series to a show-stopping and chilling blast of The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again” to accompany a hugely significant development. This is one big small-screen thriller.