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From: Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: The Day of the Jackal
Date: Thu, 28 Nov 2024 16:49:40 -0500
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A new version of The Day of the Jackal, a 1971 thriller by Frederick 
Forsyth, was released recently. (A movie by the same name was made many 
years back in 1973.) I've been making my way through the new version of 
the story, having read the book a while back.

The story's central character is The Jackal, a mysterious hired assassin 
who kills whoever he is paid to kill, provided the payday is high 
enough. As the series begins, he infiltrates an office building in 
Munich and shoots several people, most fatally, when a security guard 
detects him. One of the people he has wounded is the son of a prominent 
and controversial politician and is rushed to hospital. When the father 
goes to visit him in hospital, the Jackal shoots him dead with a single 
shot from an extremely long distance of 3 miles.

The German police contact their peers in their allied countries, 
including the Brits, and one of their analysts, a gun expert, becomes 
instrumental in connecting The Jackal to Britain because she knows that 
the only guy on earth who could make a sniper rifle of the kind he used 
was a fellow Brit. She activates a source who knows how to find the 
gun-maker and starts to track him down.

Meanwhile, The Jackal, played by Eddie Redmayne, turns out to have a 
home life. He lives in Spain and has a wife and 2 year old son. The wife 
has only a vague and inaccurate idea of what her husband does for a 
living and her family, with whom she is close, are equally in the dark. 
However, his frequent and sudden disappearances for "work" have her 
mother convinced he is having an affair behind her daughter's back. This 
soon leads the wife and her kin to begin trying to uncover who her 
husband really is.

I think that's enough to give you a sense of the story without spoiling 
too much. There are 10 episodes in this series. I've just finished the 
4th episode. According to Wikipedia, it has already been renewed for a 
second season, which is a surprise to me: until a moment ago, I assumed 
it was intended to be a "limited series".

By the way, if you've read the book, don't expect this series to be very 
similar, even though the original author is credited as a consulting 
producer. It is set in the present day, not in the 1960s, and the people 
being killed as well as the people hiring The Jackal are different. I 
don't remember The Jackal having a family life at all in the book.

IMDB rates this first season at 8.1. I'm enjoying it.

-- 
Rhino