The Screen Scribe

After a promising start to the series with two strong episodes, the third stalls and almost goes into reverse. Much of the plot falls into predictable patterns but retains elements of interest due to the promise of the previous entries. The Jackal’s story continues to be engaging, at least as far as his assassin business is concerned. I found much of the personal drama involving his wife and family to be quite contrived and overblown, which surprised me after how well the previous two episodes handled this subplot. The Jackal’s hunt for Elias Fest was quite engaging at times, but the final assassination seemed so out of character from the previous episodes as he left himself exposed to identification or capture when there really was no need for it. At face value, it was a poorly veiled excuse to execute a car chase through the streets of Munich, and even at that it was less than thrilling.

The earlier episodes did an interesting job of mirroring Bianca’s character with that of the Jackal, both professional and personal, which has made for a fascinating exploration of straddling the lines of right and wrong while abusing governmental power. But like the Jackal, everything about Bianca’s story in this episode felt contrived and rushed to speed along the plot and to be honest, very predictable. Her lack of remorse in both her involvement in the deaths of the agents in the raid, and in her continued, and not very subtle might I add, manipulation of her contact, Alison, has made her character very one-dimensional in this episode.

While the previous episode focused on themes of greed, governmental abuse of power and justifying the means to achieve a goal, these all take a back seat in episode 3 to showcase how secrets have consequences. I believe this is the root of the failure of the episode. It does not build on the established themes and character motivations from the previous episodes, instead exploring tedious side plots and a new theme that only serve to stall the pace of the story and drag the characters down with it.

Overall, I was very disappointed with episode 3. It failed to capitalise on a strong start and fell into the trap of predictable storytelling and breaking character to serve the plot. I’m cautiously optimistic for episode four and really hope it picks up the threads of the earlier instalments.

2 / 5 ✨ from the Screen Scribe.

The Day of the Jackal airs every Thursday on Sky Atlantic.

Episodes 1 – 5 are available now.