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1. Reimagined from a classic novel. Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel The Day of the Jackal is considered one of the greatest thriller novels ever written; this series is a loose reimagining rather than a direct adaptation, updating the story for contemporary geopolitics.
2. Same producers as Slow Horses. The series shares producers with Slow Horses, explaining the tonal similarities — both shows favor psychological realism and moral ambiguity over conventional spy-thriller glamour.
3. Eddie Redmayne underwent physical transformation. Redmayne significantly altered his physicality for the role, working to project a sense of controlled, coiled stillness that makes the Jackal feel genuinely threatening rather than theatrical.
4. Lashana Lynch was specifically written for. The showrunners developed the character of Bianca with Lynch in mind after her work in No Time to Die demonstrated her ability to hold her own in high-stakes thriller material.
5. Shot across multiple European countries. Production took place in the UK, Spain, Italy, and several Eastern European locations to capture the Jackal's pan-continental operational world.
6. A classic film adaptation preceded it. Fred Zinnemann's 1973 film, starring Edward Fox, is widely considered a classic of the political thriller genre; a 1997 remake with Bruce Willis was less well received.
7. Season two already confirmed. Before the first season even finished airing, Peacock announced a renewal, reflecting strong viewer numbers and critical enthusiasm during its 2024 debut season.
The Day of the Jackal reimagines Frederick Forsyth's classic 1971 thriller for the streaming era, transforming a novel about a single anonymous assassination attempt into a sprawling, psychologically complex cat-and-mouse series. Eddie Redmayne plays the Jackal — a sophisticated, emotionally unknowable assassin-for-hire operating at the highest levels of global contract killing — while Lashana Lynch plays MI5 intelligence officer Bianca, the one person who comes closest to understanding him. The series brings a commitment to unglamorous procedural realism alongside genuine thriller momentum.
Redmayne is a revelation in the role, using his natural quality of slight otherworldliness to make the Jackal genuinely disturbing rather than conventionally cool. He has a wife and family, a veneer of normalcy, and beneath it an absolute vacancy where conscience should be. Lynch matches him scene for scene as an investigator whose professional obsession with catching him begins to shade into something more complicated. The show's structure alternates between the Jackal's operations — each assignment elegant and methodical — and Bianca's increasingly desperate efforts to build a case from fragments of intelligence.
What the series does particularly well is update the story's geopolitical context for the 2020s. The targets and patrons of the Jackal's work reflect contemporary anxieties about oligarchs, populist politicians, corporate power, and the murky relationship between state intelligence and private actors. It is a thriller that takes its genre seriously while having things to say about the world in which we actually live. Available exclusively on Peacock, it arrived as one of the most talked-about new series of the 2024 season.
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