The Day Of The Jackal was a bestselling novel by Frederick Forsyth in 1971, then it was adapted into a classic film in 1973. Ronan Bennett recently adapted it into a TV series as executive producer, writer, and creator. The series is an elegant pulse pounding thriller that compliments the source material as it updates it. Popular and acclaimed upon released, it has already been renewed for a season two. Accomplished director Brian Kirk directed the first three episodes. Kirk has an impressive resume that includes episodes of Game of Thrones, Boardwalk Empire, and Penny Dreadful, to name a few. Kirk recently spoke to Immersive via Zoom.
[This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.]
What was your first impression of the book? The 1973 film…
I remember watching the 1973 film with my father as a teenager. It is a very bold, aggressively focused, merciless movie. When I first spoke to Ronan about doing the show, I went and read the book. The book and the movie both have what Ronan called “cast iron plotting.” They have incredible suspense, explosive set pieces, a juxtaposition of intimacy, and the kinship between the hunter and prey.
How much of an influence were seventies thrillers like The Parallax View, Three Days Of The Condor?
Very significant. When I was thinking about the story’s world, Alan Pakula’s work came to mind. Those 1970s thrillers were fundamental. They present complex images with strong graphic lines and frames within frames, use reflections, and use distorted imagery. There is a sense of things not being what they seem and of appearances being unreliable.
This has a big-screen quality to it. Talk about composing epic images for television.
It’s a widescreen cinematic aspect ratio that was obviously designed for bigger screens. We felt that the stakes of the story could carry that, and of course, people are buying more and more widescreen TVs now. I feel that it was a way of saying to the audience, “This is an elevated thriller.” We want you to engage with this as a full visual experience.
I like the perspective when you could see his eyeball in the target.
Those lenses actually do that. I felt that it was a great metaphor for the cost of killing, the cost of wanting to be the best. Obsession has a distorting effect, and this was a very good opportunity to show that.
This show would not work without Eddie Redmayne. What about him made you think he could play this methodical assassin?
I saw The Good Nurse on Netflix, and I was like, Eddie Redmayne is genuinely scary in this. I knew he could play this. Ronan agreed. He’s elegant and dapper in his head. This is a guy who kills people at range. He’s looking for the most direct way to execute the kill in the simplest way.
He’s a great storyteller. He’s also a movie star, and what you get with a movie star playing a role like this is a level of engagement from the audience that makes them complicit in the action. There’s a level of forgiveness that you buy with a movie star’s charisma, and the moment you grant that forgiveness, you lean in, you identify, and then you’re complicit.
Let’s talk about Lashana Lynch. Her less showy role works well as a parallel to the world of The Jackal.
Lashana Lynch was a dream to work with. I saw her in The Woman King, and she was so physical. She had that physical authenticity. She also has a genuine working-class energy that I thought would give modernity to the show. I said to her at the start, “I want you to own this character,” and she was like, “I want her to be from West London.” She had a very big hand in her look on the show, not just as an actor but also as a producer.
The contrast between hunter and hunted is pretty compelling…
I wanted to show the cost of what these people do. If you’re a person who never switches off, you never give yourself to your family, and you lose something enormous. Lashana’s character Bianca can’t ever walk away.
Let’s talk about the amazing director of photography, Christopher Ross, and the approach to shooting these two characters.
Christopher Ross and I talked a lot about point of view, its importance, and the tension that can be created by shifting between very subjective and objective points of view. You know, how unsettling that is for the viewer and how you’re pulling the audience into a character. He initially worked at Panavision before he became a DP, so his knowledge of the storytelling value of one piece of glass over another is enormous.
Were there any scenes that were more challenging than others?
The real challenge was the global jigsaw puzzle, where you’re shooting scenes that knit together in different countries. There’s a visual effects component in sequences where you’re paying microscopic attention to detail. You’re seeing amplified views through the sniper scope. Just getting all of the little pieces to make it sing and modulating the pace to stretch time and accelerate time when required takes a lot of planning.
The rifle (suitcase) prop is a work of art, so perfectly executed onscreen. Talk about its creation.
So much energy went into the discussion of that rifle. It’s his first big kill, so it has to be a defining moment. It felt like a prop that could have been in the original movie. The assembly of it was gonna tell us a lot about the character.
I have this old metal Rimowa suitcase, the tallest allowable in an overhead locker on a flight. I brought it to our production designer, Richard Bullock, and we talked about the mechanics of it and how the handles slide up and down. Richard sketched and then built several prototypes until, a few weeks later, it was perfected. Eddie took home a prototype to live with for a while. The assembly of the gun was a major discovery for the design of the show and also for the character.
The MI6 set is pretty incredible too…
It was one of the most complex design pieces in the show because we wanted it to look unique. We wanted it to have different energy, one that sits within the language of the paranoid conspiracy theory. I wanted something functional. The exterior of the real MI6 building inspired us. Richard did a tremendous job of uniting the actual fabric of the space and giving me the experience I wanted, going in there for the first time, and delivering an interior within our visual language. It’s a tremendous piece of design.
Talk about working with Volker Bertelmann…
I love Volker. He really penetrates the fabric of the story and captures the texture of the world. He has a lovely Teutonic detachment but also deep empathy with the characters.
This is a successful series, a modern telling of The Jackal that really pulses and has emotion. It manages to update it without disrespecting the source material. What’s it like being on the other end of this now?
I am proud that we updated a classic story without feeling like a rehash. It felt like we were in a time in the world ripe for retelling this story. There’s been a collapse of trust in the idea of truth, and Ronan’s script felt like a post-truth thriller. We wanted to retell the story in a way that felt appropriate and illuminating for our time. The way audiences have responded to it at multiple levels indicates that we’ve achieved what we wanted.
The Day Of The Jackal season one is streaming on Peacock.
