The Day of the Jackal mark 2

The first series of The Day of the Jackal (in ten one-hour parts) featuring Eddie Redmayne as the Jackal and Lashana Lynch as his would-be nemesis, Bianca Pullman of MI6, concluded in December.

Unlike the Fred Zinneman film (1973), a tightly constructed 142 minutes, the “updated” TV version goes on and on. An already shaky plot just gets more ludicrous as the Jackal runs around Europe evading MI6 while pursuing his victims, the main target being a tech billionaire, UDC (think Bill Gates on speed).

Although a billionaire, UDC has a plan to release all the world’s banking information into the public domain through a strategy he calls “The River”, thus destroying at a stroke the power of the ultra-rich and freeing the world for economic change . The mind boggles at this farrago of utter nonsense, but the stinking rich are a bit miffed and the Jackal is hired to kill UDC.

In the background, as the series comes to its temporary finale, a murky conspiracy involving the Foreign Secretary and the MI6 Deputy Chief is revealed. Sky TV promises a second series soon and, although I am quite amenable to a good adventure yarn, I’m not sure I can sit through another ten hours of this.