Munich. The assassin known as the Jackal is preparing to carry out a hit. It’s highly risky, but highly lucrative. But before he can go through with it, his client reneges on payment. For the Jackal, this cannot stand.

London. MI6 arms specialist Bianca Pullman has put together enough information to track the Jackal down. With global security in danger, she’s ready to go to any lengths to stop him.

This is The Day Of The Jackal, a new 10-part series inspired by the classic Frederick Forsyth novel that set the template for many of the hitman stories that followed in its wake. It was adapted into a popular movie in 1973 starring Edward Fox, Michael Lonsdale and some iconic Citroëns, but this new series gives it a modern twist – and that doesn’t just mean buying 3D-printed weapons on the dark web.

Starring Oscar winner Eddie Redmayne (The Danish Girl) and BAFTA winner Lashana Lynch (No Time To Die), with sharp scripts by Ronan Bennett (Top Boy, Gunpowder), The Day Of The Jackal is an intricate and gripping thriller about two highly skilled professionals who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals.

The Day Of The Jackal begins on Thursday 7 November at 9pm on Sky Showcase HD (CH 109). Here’s what you need to know about it.

It’s deeply respectful to the original

The people behind the series say they got involved not because of an abiding affection for the original novel and the 1973 movie adaptation. Executive producer Gareth Neame says, “We wanted to stay relatively faithful to the original book, retaining the idea of an English assassin and a cat-and-mouse situation involving a chase across many European locations.”

“It’s meant to be a love letter to the original, so we were trying to keep as close as we could to certain elements and themes,” says his fellow executive producer Nigel Marchant. When you’re updating a beloved classic, he adds, “you need it to be as good as the original if not better, and ensure it doesn’t corrupt the original either.”

For Redmayne, The Day Of The Jackal was a long-standing favourite. “It had been a film that I was brought up on. I had read the book a long time ago, but I just adored them both. I started reading the scripts and they were so compelling and the story was so propulsive. It felt as if it was a genre we recognize yet it felt like it had a unique quality to it.”

But it’s updated for a 2020s TV audience

As in the original, the starting point is when the Jackal is employed to take someone out. “The biggest question was who the target would be,” says Neame. “Should it be a head of state as with the novel, or do certain non-government individuals hold the real power now?” There are also elements added to make it more relevant to 2024. “We have right-wing radicalism, a disenfranchised youth that feels the world is corrupted, and megalomaniac social media gurus.”

The other key difference is fleshing out the Jackal himself – which has the effect of upping the stakes. “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,” Neame says. “That’s when the idea of him having a wife was established. We ask how he sustains the life of an international assassin while having a wife to whom he can’t explain everything.”

The lead actors were fully committed to the project

“When we started talking about candidates for the role, Eddie was at the top of the list,” says Neame. “You can tell from his body of work that he’s attracted to characters who require a lot of preparation and this role involved disguises, different languages, voices and physicality.” The Oscar-winning actor was in such demand that “we thought it would be nigh on impossible to get him” – but he jumped at the chance, and came on board as an executive producer too. 

As for Lynch, Marchant says, “she brings vulnerability, and yet she can play the action and the physicality of it. She’s someone slightly on the outside at her job and also slightly on the outside of her family: her husband and daughter have a very close relationship, and she is a mother who is not always in tune with that. She is a career woman and loves her job. How does she make that work at home? Lashana can balance the real emotion required with the physicality her character needs.”

Lynch also took on a role as co-exective producer, and says: “It enabled me to oversee the things I care about, and things that I know women and the Black community will care about it. There’s so much to be done about dismantling the cliché of a strong Black woman and bringing it it back to a more grounded, realistic depiction – someone who could be your friend, your sister or your auntie [but] is one of the best in MI6.”

The characters are complex and compelling

When a TV drama is all about the relationship between two characters, it’s important that they’re compelling – and even more so when the characters constantly circle each other but never interact. “The archetype of the empathy-less assassin whose blood runs cold couldn’t work in this version – it’s 10 hours long,” says Redmayne. Here, the Jackal “had assumed he would be alone all his life, and then when he meets his wife, Nuria, it’s an Achilles heel. He thinks he can wrap it up and they can start a new life. That’s his weakness as an assassin.”

Lynch describes Bianca as a “dynamic” and “three-dimensional” woman who “loves the chase with the Jackal and gets a thrill from it. She rubs people the wrong way and does things in the most unorthodox manner to get what she wants. However, her home life suffers because she is so great at work. That makes her relatable.”

Also in the impressive cast are Spanish actor Úrsula Corberó (Money Heist) as the Jackal’s wife, Nuria (pictured above), Charles Dance (The Crown), Richard Dormer (Rellik), Chukwudi Iwuji (The Split), Lia Williams (Mr Bates Vs The Post Office), Eleanor Matsuura (The Walking Dead) and Jonjo O’Neill (Nightsleeper). 

The Jackal’s disguise make-up is incredible

Because the Jackal is a true master of disguise, Redmayne had to disappear into the character – and into the personas that he takes on. The actor worked with movement director Alexandra Reynolds to help him be “elegant, calm and economic” because, he says, the Jackal “glides through space”. There were also tricks of the trade that needed to become second nature, and those came from ex-soldier Paul Biddiss. “He showed me all of his tricks, all the old-school things,” Redmayne says. “For example, often people like the Jackal have tampons on them because when you receive a bullet wound that’s the most brilliant thing to plug it. Or mirrors for moving around the streets and watching people. Or they’ll carry a high-vis jacket because there’s nothing like putting on a high-vis jacket to get you access to restricted areas.”

Subtle but ingenious prosthetics work was also required. “To completely transform him so you wouldn’t recognise it’s him was fantastically exciting but equally terrifying because if you don’t pull it off, there’s nowhere to hide,” says prosthetics designer Richard Martin. “We were able to age the characters, which helped us because we could put weight where Eddie didn’t have weight. We needed to completely lose Eddie in the make-up but he also needed to be able to perform. So we disguised his lips with a moustache so it didn’t limit the movement around his mouth.”

When is The Day Of The Jackal on TV?

The Day Of The Jackal starts on Thursday 7 November at 9pm on Sky Showcase HD (CH 109), when the first five episodes will be available in On Demand > Sky Showcase. The remaining five episodes will air weekly at 9pm on Thursdays. The series will also be available in crystal-clear Ultra HD in On Demand.