Spy-drama porn: Sky’s The Day of the Jackal reviewed

All the previewers have been drooling lasciviously over The Day of the Jackal reboot and, having seen the first three episodes, I quite understand why. This is coffee-table spy-drama porn perfectly calculated to satisfy all manner of lurid and exotic tastes.

There’s sniper-rifle-assembly porn; foreign-property porn (the Jackal’s gorgeous mountain retreat near Cadiz with a to-die-for infinity pool); fashion-nostalgia porn (especially the brown suede jacket worn with a red neckerchief in homage to the original, starring Edward Fox); far-right German politician’s head exploding in a pink mist as the heavy calibre sniper round reaches the end of its remarkable, unprecedented two-and-a-half-mile trajectory porn.

Essentially this is The Night Manager with a slightly different plot and a different Old Etonian as the lead – Eddie Redmayne instead of Tom Hiddleston – but with a similarly satisfying mix of locations (Munich, Belarus, Spain, London, Belfast, New York, etc.),