The Day of the Jackal is ruined by this one major problem

There should be a word for that special kind of disappointment you feel when a thing you’ve been looking forward to turns out to be a dud. Maybe the Swedes have such a word. If not, maybe Trump 2.0 will cause America’s MAGA Republicans to invent one.

Whatever the word is (or will be) I was feeling the need of it well before the end of the second episode of The Day Of The Jackal, Sky’s 10-part adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s novel about a cravat-wearing English hitman. And after weeks of trailers and hype and previews and more hype, I really was looking forward to this show. So much so that I even re-watched Fred Zinnemann’s sure-footed 1973 film version, which stars Edward Fox as the Jackal.

Sky have updated the setting to the modern day – in both novel and film the year is 1963 and the intended target is Charles de Gaulle – and added a James Bond title sequence complete with Billie Eilish-flavoured theme song. Eddie Redmayne plays the Jackal while Lashana Lynch (who has actually played Agent 007 in a Bond film, No Time To Die) is MI6 “gun nut” Bianca. Your classic maverick spook type, Bianca makes it her mission to track down the Jackal before he makes his next kill. And woe betide anyone who stands in Bianca’s way, such as former Loyalist prisoner Alison (Kate Dickie, doing a more than passable Belfast accent) or her gunsmith brother-in-law Norman (Richard Dormer).

Read more:

Herald Arts | Are ABBA really ‘the world’s greatest band’?

To say Redmayne channels Edward Fox is an understatement. He looks, sounds, talks, dresses and even walks like him. The only obvious difference is that where Fox attended Harrow School, Redmayne went to what Uncle Monty in Withnail & I refers to as “the other place”: Eton College. The homage stretches even further than that. One scene involving a hand-tooled rifle and a watermelon suspended from a tree is literally a shot-for-shot (excuse the pun) recreation of a moment from the original film.

That level of mimicry contributes to the sense of deflation, as do the regular on-screen titles telling us which city we’re in now – Cadiz! Munich! Tallinn! London, England! – and the endless establishing drone shots of those same places. I guess those film location tax incentives are just too good to ignore.

Edward Fox in the original 1973 film The Day of the Jackal (Image: Newsquest) But that’s not the main problem. The main problem lies in the fact that creator Ronan Bennett has junked the thing which made the original Jackal such an unforgettable character, namely his solitary nature and the fact that you learn absolutely diddly squat about who he is or where he came from. Home life? Doesn’t have one. Kids? Wife? Pets? Nope. He is, literally, a ghost.

In Sky’s version, however, the Jackal has all those things as well as a name. Redmayne is a good enough actor to have done the whole Edward Fox lone wolf thing well had that been the show’s intention. But he’s totally implausible as a doting family man, even a conflicted one.

You’d think there might be some consolation in the character of Bianca, but there isn’t. She’s a despicable human being, to the point where every time she’s in a shoot-out you find yourself willing her to be, well, shot out. If The Day Of The Jackal was a first-person shooter video game, you’d definitely turn your guns on her first.

Read more:

Herald Arts | Photo booths are now a rarity – perfect time for an artistic comeback?

I will add a caveat here. Two, in fact. First, I have continued watching because I was gripped enough to want to know what was going to happen, despite the show’s shortcomings. Second, I have only watched the five episodes currently available, so perhaps there’s a fiendishly clever denouement in the offing which will make my complaints redundant.

So, stick or twist? With so much potentially promising drama vying for our attention on the streaming platforms, it’s an increasingly relevant question. Here’s another: how long can you afford to give a show before you move on to the next Must See item in your watchlist? Only long enough to form an opinion is the truthful answer. With all that in mind, here’s what The Herald’s TV critic Alison Rowat thought of the show, as well as her take on the best of the rest of the week’s offering.

Rock star and Rock, Sheila

If there’s a British rock star who truly deserves the name, and with all the term entails, it’s Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie. He does now, and has always, looked and played the part.

And with another iconic rock star disappointing many recently with his views on cultural boycotts (hello Nick Cave), it’s refreshing to hear Mr Gillespie cite Noam Chomsky and Antonio Gramsci on his way to unequivocal condemnation of the ongoing situation in Gaza. Speaking to The Herald’s Gabriel McKay in a long and wide-ranging interview, he had much to say on that issue and many others. Nor did he ignore the Scream’s latest album Come Ahead. You can read the piece here.

And of course while you can look, dress, act and quote Chomsky like a rock star, it always helps to have someone on the other side of the lens capturing your overall rock star essence for posterity. Enter the rock photographer, a rarefied breed whose prime exponents are often just as lauded as their subjects. Ahead of an exhibition of her work at Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow, The Herald’s Teddy Jamieson was lucky enough to meet one of them – Sheila Rock, who famously photographed The Clash as they were starting out and later worked on 1980s style bible The Face. You can read Teddy’s interview here.

And finally

As ever The Herald’s arts reviewers have been busy with the latest cultural offerings. Music critic Keith Bruce was in attendance at Glasgow’s City Halls where the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra was performing a lengthy and “crunchy” programme under the baton of conductor Mark Wigglesworth. It encompassed music by Mozart and Robert Schumann as well as Benjamin Britten’s Nocturne and (the “crunchy” one) a rarely performed piece by 20th century Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski.

Sign up for Herald Arts and get weekly info and insight into arts and culture from Scotland and beyond.

Elsewhere literary critic Rosemary Goring has run the rule over Gliff, the latest novel by four-time Booker nominee Ali Smith, once described by Irish author Sebastian Barry as Scotland’s Nobel laureate-in-waiting. “A fleet-footed tale that carries an echo of Angela Carter and her subversive fiction,” Rosemary writes. “No doubt many will also find shades of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley, not to mention Margaret Atwood.”

Count me in.