ALLY ROSS
Sky’s Day of the Jackal remake may have cost £100m but Eddie Redmayne is still about as scary as Frank Spencer
Put a pair of glasses on him and the Jackal’s about as sinister as Nigel Lythgoe in Popstars
OF all the great foghorning nuisances who’ve built their television part these past few years, there’s surely none more annoying than the cocky, over-familiar continuity announcer.
Time was, these faceless intruders would just tell you the name of the next show and then go.
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Now, they have names, concerns, helpline advice and stupid, on-brand opinions to share every hour on the hour.
The absolute worst of them currently being the bloke from Sky Showcase who cannot hide the fact its Day Of The Jackal remake is a desecration of Frederick Forsyth’s novel and Edward Fox’s unforgettable 1973 film, no matter how often he booms: “There’s absolutely no way you can call it a day after that episode.”
It’s not his call, obviously. Someone from Sky has his hand up the continuity announcer’s arse because they’ve reportedly spent £100million on this sacrilege without apparently having enough money for a decent Hungarian lighting unit or an editor who could vanish about half of the ten-hour running time.
Frank Spencer
Despite the budget, the casting’s come off the rails somewhere along the line as well because they’ve handed the lead secret service investigator role to Lashana Lynch, who isn’t up to the task of playing Bianca Pullman, as I suspect some of the production team knew when they gave her the part.
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Nor is the series in much danger of being rescued by Eddie Redmayne, a fine actor who’s been asked to transform himself into the world’s most deadly assassin, despite having a touch of the Frank Spencers about him.
The “master of disguise” thing doesn’t work either. Add a blond wig to Eddie, he becomes Tommy Steele in Half A Sixpence.
Put a pair of glasses on him and the Jackal’s about as sinister as Nigel Lythgoe in Popstars, ping-ponging his way around the continent — Budapest, Tallinn, Riga, Cadiz — in a manner that’s meant to create a mood of heightened glamour, but actually just makes me think he’s got himself lumbered with a really s**t Europa Conference League group.
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Death and mayhem follow Eddie everywhere, in pretty unpleasant and soulless fashion, obviously. If I give not a toss who he kills or how he does it, though, that’s down to Ronan Bennett, who wrote, produced and adapted the show and should be Googled by anyone who’s thinking of committing themselves to the resulting marathon.
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The 'master of disguise' thing doesn’t work either. Add a blond wig to Eddie, he becomes Tommy Steele in Half A Sixpence
A committed Irish Republican, Bennett was convicted of murdering an RUC officer in 1974, but released a year later when the conviction was ruled unsafe.
Subsequently, though, he claimed that even if he knew the identity of the 1998 Omagh bombers, who murdered 29 people, including six children, he would’ve refused to hand them over to the police. A grovelling apology followed.
Eddie Redmayne Scores £1M Per Episode in New Sky Drama!
Bennett’s history isn’t, I’m sure, the reason why the only vaguely well-written characters in this remake are all psychopaths, while the rest of the cast seem to be swapping dialogue from an old Jean-Claude Van Damme movie and telling Bianca: “I can buy you some time.” “How long?” “Twenty four hours maybe.”
I wouldn’t mention his past, however, unless I was convinced Bennett’s political background definitely caused the production to take a confusing and self-indulgent detour to Belfast, where we discover the Jackal’s gunmaker was a Loyalist terrorist, a detail that allowed a Secret Service boss to sneer: “He’s Northern Irish? Well, I suppose that counts as British . . . for now.”
Sure as night follows day, of course, Bennett’s also a huge fan of Jeremy Corbyn, the useful idiot’s useful idiot
Sure as night follows day, of course, Bennett’s also a huge fan of Jeremy Corbyn, the useful idiot’s useful idiot, and his real Jackal bogeyman is international capitalism.
‘On a f***ing horse’
A comically ironic target given the £100million behind this car-sponsored production and also one which made me long to see it choke on its own overblown extravagance and pomposity.
As luck would have it, that moment came at the end of episode five, during a face-off with The Jackal in the Hungarian gloom, when someone suddenly shouted: “He’s going mobile . . . on a f***ing horse!”
At which point, the lights seemed to go out and we had to try and work out from the bracketed subtitles what the hell was happening.
“(Tyres screech),” “(Grunts),” “(Gasps),” “(Clopping fades),” “(Muffled gunshot),” “(Body thuds).”
Many baffling minutes later, the lights finally came back on, credits rolled and that wretched continuity announcer was back.
“THAT,” he claimed with a bellow, while I put him in my sights, “was epic, event TV. You’ve got a week to recover, new episodes . . . ”
(Muffled gunshot. Body thuds.)
Gary's taxing travels
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ALTERNATIVE Budget idea.
The Government launches a tax raid on celebrity travelogues, demanding 50 per cent of all related TV advertising and sponsorship revenue, randomly backdated to Robson Green’s Australian Adventure in 2015, with an identical amount being taken from the BBC.
They’d wipe out the national debt with Joanna Lumley’s back catalogue alone, surely?
And if they didn’t, or they destroyed celebrity travelogues, in the process?
Well, you would at least be spared the grind of watching Gary Barlow’s Wine Tour: South Africa, a competition filler on This Morning, at best, that was stretched to FIVE whole daytime hours on ITV.
An unsustainable slog in Gary’s company, even if he is professionally bongoed.
So they paired him up with some celebrity “partners in wine”, whose introductions all sounded like even worse ideas for TV travelogues: “I’m grape-picking with Ben Shephard,” “I’m going kayaking with Michaela Strachan,” “I’m cooling off in a pool, with Jane McDonald, looking at some hippos.”
A series-saving move, as it transpired. For Jane McDonald is the Zen master of television’s celebrity travelogue and understands exactly what the audience requires, so when a tiny antelope bounded to life in Kruger National Park during episode four, she looked straight at Gary and a park ranger, then simply asked the camera: “Is that a dik-dik?”
No, Jane. It’s just one of them.
TV quiz. What event caused Big Brother’s Hanah to weep uncontrollably and say: “This is torture, this is pain, this is suffering”?
A) The plight of the Rohingya people of Myanmar.
B) Ongoing war in Ukraine.
C) Big Brother’s shopping budget failing to include Coco Pops.
Unexpected morons in the bagging area
TIPPING Point: Lucky Stars, Ben Shephard: “The 2001 UK top ten for the band Wheatus is Teenage what?”
Judi Love: “Ninja Mutant Turtles.”
Bradley Walsh: “Jamaica has won all but one of its Summer Olympic medals in what sport?”
Ria Hebden: “Hockey.”
The Chase, Bradley Walsh: “What does the ST mean in the title of someone who’s been canonised?” Ethan: “Shot.”
The Chase: Celebrity Special, Bradley Walsh: “The name of which thread used to clean your teeth is also a style of bikini?”
Neil Jones: “Thong.”
Random irritations
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ITV’s Parents’ Evening dropping the F-bomb, like it doesn’t really want a primetime, Saturday-night audience.
Gary Barlow still labouring under the misapprehension there are three Rs in “prerforming.” Frankie Boyle’s wooden heart bleeding for “the genocide in Gaza” on The Last Leg.
And the once-whimsical ITV series Midsomer Murders suddenly being overrun by drag queens and lectures about “cisgender women”, or as they used to be known . . . women.
Another innocent TV pleasure ruined by the suffocating left-wing pox of virtue-signalling.
Great sporting insights
RYAN LOWE: “Haaland has a day off, one week a season.”
Kris Boyd: “City have got the same points, if not the same points, as last year.”
And Ryan Lowe: “With Cardiff, the longer it goes on, the longer it stops.”
(Compiled by Graham Wray)
GREAT TV lies and delusions of the month. Good Morning Britain, Susanna Reid: “Jon Sopel, journalist and host of the News Agents podcast, is utterly impartial.”
Loud and annoying Lily, from Big Brother: “I didn’t think I was loud and annoying.”
And The Chase: Celebrity Special, Bradley Walsh to Robert Peston: “I’ve got to be honest with you, Robert, A) I thought you were really brave doing Luck Be A Lady, on All Star Musicals and B) I thought you nailed it.” But C) He didn’t really.
lTV mysteries: How the hell did ITV’s Cooking With The Stars ever get four series? Would it kill DI Ray to change her expression once a series? And will Channel 4 follow up Scotland’s Poshest Train with Scotland’s Pishest Train?
’Cos I’ve got a four-part series in my own head ready to go. Starting with Ardrossan Harbour to Kilwinning.
TV Gold
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NICE-GUY Tiago nailing 82 grand on The Wheel.
BBC1’s Wolf Hall: The Mirror And The Light masterpiece.
The utterly bewitching snow leopard footage on Attenborough’s Asia (BBC1).
Gone Fishing’s Bob Mortimer attempting to entice Paul Whitehouse into a conversation about his new dishwasher, with an epic display of bloke talk: “Ten seconds after the cycle’s finished, it flicks the door open automatically. Beginning to get interested . . . ?”
And the BBC’s brilliant coverage of Remembrance Sunday, which will forever be the most stunning and affecting event of the year.
Though I’m resigned to the fact we will also have to endure bedroom-bound internet warriors, who call themselves “anti-fascist” but would like to erase men who fought real fascists from the history books, for ever and a day as well.
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Lookalike of the week
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THIS week’s winner is Nigel Farage and Pilot from Farscape.
Sent in by Connor David.
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