You're paying me to kill him. I am charging you for getting away.

Continuing my trip up Empire's top 20 TV shows of 2024

#6 :  The Day Of The Jackal

A story of 'analogue spycraft' based on Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel (a book which previously inspired Fred Zinnemann’s same-named 1973 genre classic film), Ronan Bennett’s extraordinarily tense and taut ten-part thriller The Day Of The Jackal sees Eddie Redmayne on mercurial form as The Jackal, an elite assassin who — having just pulled off a spectacular kill in Munich — finds himself contracted to kill a tech billionaire with a God complex (Khalid Abdalla). At the same time, MI6 agent Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch) tails the hitman every step of the way, dangerously spinning the plates of her spiralling family life and increasingly desperate attempts to catch the Jackal. Reminiscent of David Fincher's The Killer in places, yet indelibly infused with Bennett's keen eye for exploring criminals existing on society's margins, this contemporary take on a genre classic brilliantly blends old-school spycraft with an intoxicating, in-depth character study of a killer that’ll leave you questioning where your loyalties as a viewer lie. A dead-eye masterclass in suspense.

This is another one I watched - I loved both the book and the film, although when I saw that Lashana Lynch was in this, I suspected they might have somewhat adapted the source material...

And yes, there's an assassin (Eddie Redmayne) in this and they're being chased by an agent (Lashana Lynch), but that's pretty much all Frederick Forsyth (who died only a couple of weeks ago) would recognise. Does it matter? Nope, not at all. It's well acted, nicely tense, looks gorgeous and doesn't always go where you're expecting it to go. Do you need to know anything else? No, not really - it's definitely the case that the less you know beforehand, the better...

I'm desperately struggling to think of anything to say about Eddie and Lashana other than they are good at that acting thing, but that's all I've got. I'd also call out Úrsula Corberó who does a good job as Nuria, a character who most definitely doesn't appear in the book - everyone else does a fine job but an awful lot of the characters do suffer from being (often back-stabbing) dicks.

This isn't going to change the world or your views on anything, but if you want some daft but tense escapism then I think it hits the spot nicely. I guess the only other thing about it that's noteworthy is that it's on Sky because I think this, The Last Of Us, The Penguin and Gangs Of London (my guilty pleasure!) are the only things I remember watching on Sky recently - their days of being the go-to destination for quality TV series are long behind them.

#7 - Tremendous fun
#5 - Well, I didn't not like it