'Day of the Jackal' review: Eddie Redmayne propels this edge of your seat thriller

WHAT IT'S ABOUT A lone assassin who goes by the code name "Jackal" (Eddie Redmayne, in his first lead role on a TV series) achieves what many think impossible — a hit on a right-wing German politician from 3,000 yards — and the search is on. But who is this guy? Ironically, a family man who lives on a sprawling Spanish estate with wife Nuria (Úrsula Corberó) who has no idea where all the money is coming from to pay for it. Meanwhile, MI6 agent Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch, who was James Bond ally Nomi in 2021's "No Time to Die") thinks a plausible avenue of investigation is to find the source of the weapon he used for the hit. As she pursues her prey and the Jackal pursues his, you may expect, euphemistically speaking, "collateral damage," or innocent people who get in their way. (A warning: This loose adaptation of Frederick Forsyth's 1971 classic, which became a hit movie in 1973. can be extremely violent.) The first five episodes of 10 drop Thursday.

MY SAY Master of disguise, multilinguist, escape artist, assassin ... Looks like you'd need a pretty good actor to play the Jackal, and "Day of the Jackal" got a pretty good one. Winning that Oscar for 2014's "The Theory of Everything" may be the lesser of Redmayne's accomplishments, or just Hollywood's cherry on top. There are also the Tonys, Oliviers and BAFTAs (British Academy Awards), the totality of all conferring a sense that he is one of the leading actors of his generation. And only 42. What glory must lie ahead.

What lies before us right now is hardly glorious but good enough. Redmayne is terrific in "Jackal." You can't take your eyes off him. He refuses to let you. To the broadest of screen stereotypes — brutal assassin on the run from MI6 agent — he adds layer upon layer, nuance upon nuance. Think of this as the antithesis of his Emcee in "Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club" — a florid attention hog currently thrilling or baffling audiences in the Broadway revival. His Jackal is a precision instrument, with no word, movement or number wasted. In fact, he'd make an excellent accountant, or IRS agent.

Who is this Jackal? Redmayne doesn't exactly tell us that either, at least in the early episodes. He's an anti-James Bond, or, to use a fancier term, an Ur-James Bond — a primitive, primal version who apparently didn't get enough attention from mum and dad when he was a kid. His real name may be Peter, but that's hardly relevant. Just as James is 007, he's the Jackal. The name fits.

Then there's Lynch's Bianca Pullman, a sociopath with her own style. Bianca is adept with guns too, and like Jackal, she bulls her way past colleagues or civilians who get in her way. Bystanders are the cost of doing business, but (hey) it's a hard business. You are left to believe (or meant to) that their similarities outweigh their differences. Unlike "Orphan Black" — similarities abound with that series — they certainly aren't clones, but not all that far off.

What's left, then, is the show, which can be an edge-of-the-seat viewing experience and seat-of-the-pants narrative. Forsyth based his spy novel on a real-life assassination attempt on French President Charles de Gaulle by a far-right terrorist group opposed to Algerian independence. That veracity gave it propulsion and edge, in contrast to the fanciful (and fun) Ian Fleming series that had launched two decades before. But other than the cat-and-mouse, this series bears no resemblance to the book. That's a shame because Forsyth clearly knew what he was doing. You can't always be certain the showrunners here do.

BOTTOM LINE Edge-of-the-seat viewing but seat-of-the-pants storytelling. At least both Redmayne and Lynch shine.