The Screen Scribe

The penultimate episode of The Day of the Jackal sees our titular character achieve his ultimate mission: the assassination of Ulle Dag Charles, at the behest of the New York group, and retire with his £100 million payday. While the result was never in question, though was dragged out entirely to the detriment of the pacing, the method of assassination and the scene itself were incredibly well done.

Some of the strongest aspects of this series have been the bespoke weapons used by the Jackal in his various assignments and the creative ways he utilises them. The assassination of UDC is the culmination of this, as the Jackal sets up a rather sophisticated piece of hardware that he eventually mounts upon himself and seems to mimic the sway of the boat, while simultaneously adjusting the aim of the sniper rifle to compensate for this. It’s a seriously impressive contraption and hats off to whoever concocted this in the creative department. The scene itself is very well shot and is full of tension despite the foregone conclusion. The Jackal makes his kill and speeds away towards the horizon, and away from his pursuers.

Overall it feels like a last desperate plan from the Jackal, and the show itself, to reach the end of this rather drawn-out story. I’ve said it several times in previous reviews that this show would have benefitted greatly from a lower episode count and a tighter, more focused narrative. Plot holes and contrivances continuously appear throughout the shows run and are again predominant here in episode 9. The side-plot with Nuria’s brother Alvaro is completely thrust into the main narrative with very little set-up beyond a few throw away lines of dialogue in the early episodes regarding Alvaro’s ‘business opportunity’, which I believe was a bar his friend was selling. By episode 9 this is just a vague, unexplored reason to get Charles to assassinate a gangster that has appeared out of nowhere. The reason for this? To give Bianca a convenient lead to find the Jackal. It’s so obvious and amounts to incredibly lazy writing.

Bianca continues to make decisions based on emotion and does not appear to have learned from her past mistakes in her pursuit of the Jackal, as she rather cruelly interrogates a cancer riddled captain Baldwin. It’s poor character development in an attempt to continue mirroring her character with that of the Jackal, both doggedly chasing their goals regardless of the consequences and never learning from them.

If this show continues beyond this season, as it is rumoured, I do hope the showrunners and writers do not follow the same trajectory as their lead characters and actually learn from the mistakes of this shows first season.

2 / 5 ✨ from the Screen Scribe.

The Day of the Jackal is available to watch now on Sky and Now TV.