The Day of the Jackal has hit the target for Sky. Eddie Redmayne's glossy assassin series premiered last Thursday in the UK and has tracked down 3M viewers in seven days. Sky said this figure, which includes repeats and streaming on Now,

The story of "The Day of the Jackal" was first unveiled in Frederick Forsyth's 1971 novel, which follows a mysterious assassin; Fred Zinnemann then adapted it for the big screen in his 1973 film. Now,

Padded with sluggish sequences and uninteresting subplots, this aggravatingly inert affair lumbers its way toward an unsatisfying finish line, in the process squandering a captivating performance by Eddie Redmayne as its chameleonic protagonist.