How Peacock’s The Day of the Jackal Series Updates the Beloved ’70s Thriller

You've seen Eddie Redmayne as a quirky, magical-creature-loving wizard in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. You've seen him as ALS-afflicted physicist Stephen Hawking in The Theory of Everything—a role for which he won the Oscar for Best Actor. Now, you can see him as a highly-trained, disguise-wielding assassin in Peacock's new The Day of the Jackal series, the first five episodes of which are currently streaming.

Based on British author Frederick Forsyth's best-selling 1971 novel of the same name, showrunner Ronan Bennett's Day of the Jackal adaptation puts a modern spin on Forsyth's 1963-set tale of a professional assassin hired to carry out a contract hit on French President Charles de Gaulle. This time around, we meet Redmayne's assassin, codename Jackal, as he prepares to take out divisive far-right politician Manfred Fest, the frontrunner to be the next German chancellor. Following this hit, which he accomplishes by sniper rifle at a distance typically considered to be impossible, the Jackal is drawn into a plot to assassinate tech billionaire-turned-wannabe man of the people Ulle Dag Charles (Khalid Abdalla)—a job that comes with a payout that would allow the Jackal to retire for good. But when his killer activities attract the attention of British intelligence agent and guns expert Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch), the pair enters into a game of cat and mouse that threatens to tear apart not only their lives, but those of everyone around them.

The story has previously been adapted twice for the screen, first in 1973 by director Fred Zinnemann with Edward Fox as the Jackal and Michel Lonsdale as his Parisian police detective foil in a critically-acclaimed thriller that closely follows the plot of the book. The second attempt, director Michael Caton-Jones' 1997 film The Jackal, was a much looser and less well-received interpretation, with Bruce Willis starring as an unnamed assassin who's hired to kill the First Lady of the United States.

A contemporary update

While the events at the center of Forsyth's novel—in which the French dissident paramilitary group known as the Organisation Armée Secrète (OAS) moves to eliminate de Gaulle as an act of opposition to his stance on granting Algeria independence from a century of French colonial rule—were highly relevant at the time of the book's publication, the show focuses on more modern political issues. However, beyond a vague thesis on class warfare, it's unclear exactly what point the series is trying to make about its Elon Musk-like tech mogul and his plan to launch a new piece of software called River that will make every financial transaction in the world completely transparent—especially considering how Musk's role in international politics has evolved leading up to the show's release.

The series also gives both the Jackal and his opponent, now a Black female M16 operative, family drama and personal dynamics that complicate their professional lives. "In the original, you know nothing about the Jackal, he's a ghost. We knew immediately that it wouldn't work in a 10-part series," executive producer Gareth Neame said in the show's production notes. "That's when the idea of him having a wife and child was established. It brings a whole other layer to the story and the character. In our version, although there's an air of ghostliness about him, we do meet his family. We ask how he sustains the life of an international assassin while having a wife and family to whom he can't explain everything."

An overlong narrative

Peacock's Day Of the Jackal has been met with generally favorable reviews, earning an 89 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 71 on Metacritic. But if there's one complaint that continually crops up amid the praise, it's that, at 10 episodes, the season feels too bloated for the story at hand. While the 1973 film clocks in at an already lengthy two-and-a-half hours, the show invents numerous subplots and resorts to depicting the nitty-gritty of menial assassin duties and police procedural work to fill out the additional runtime.

Still, if you're someone who goes in for spy thrillers, the excitement of the show's central chase combined with the push and pull between its two less-than-moral leads will likely be enough to distract you from any flaws. The remaining five episodes are slated to drop weekly every Thursday until the double finale on Dec. 12.