the best new shows to watch starting tonight – The Irish Times

Choice of the week

Day of the Jackal

Thursday, Sky Atlantic & Now, 9pm

Frederick Forsyth’s classic novel has already been adapted into an acclaimed 1973 film starring Edward Fox – and a half-baked 1997 remake of The Jackal starring Bruce Willis and Richard Gere. The book centers on a race to stop an assassin before he can kill French President Charles de Gaulle; this new 10-episode television thriller series moves the action to the geopolitical arena of the 2020s, and stars Eddie Redmayne as a titular assassin whose fee for killing famous targets reaches a cool $100 million in today’s money. Lashana Lynch, who previously starred in 007’s No Time To Die, stars as Bianca, an agent who becomes obsessed with finding the Jackal before he completes his deadliest mission. Top Boy writer Ronan Bennett is the writer and showrunner, and he promises the series will stay true to the DNA of the original story, while taking viewers on a cat-and-mouse chase to so many exotic locations around the world that even James Bond could get a time zone. Redmayne is fittingly ghostly as Jackal, a chameleon who blends in easily with the crowd, while Ursula Corbero, from the acclaimed Spanish TV series Money Heist, is Jackal’s glamorous girlfriend who has no idea she’s dating the world’s most wanted killer.

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of Asia

Sunday, BBC One, 6.30pm

This new series is certainly not lacking in ambition as it aims to document the nature and wildlife of the vast continent of Asia, from the eastern Mediterranean to the western Pacific. In this first episode, titled Beneath the Waves, the crew explores the continent’s coastline – the longest of any continent – and follows some of the world’s most powerful currents – including the infamous Indonesia Current, which creates deadly eddies – to discover some of the extraordinary diversity of marine species , living in these stormy seas. Among them are Moorish idols, whose spawning grounds are constantly attacked by gray reef sharks; the dark-gilled leaper, a fish that can climb trees; the neon blue firefly squid and the harmless-looking sea bunny, actually a sea slug whose favorite food, a deadly poisonous blue sponge, protects it from predators.

Until I kill you

Sunday-Wednesday, UTV, 9 p.m

Anna Maxwell-Martin stars as nurse Delia Ballmer with Sean Evans as John Sweeney in this true story about a woman who survived a relationship with a serial killer. When Ballmer meets Sweeney in a pub, they immediately hit it off, but Sweeney soon shows his dark side, violently assaulting Delia and revealing to her that he killed his ex-girlfriend. Delia goes to the police and Sweeney is arrested, but as soon as he is out on bail, he tries to kill Delia. Seven years later, Delia, still trying to rebuild her shattered life, is called to testify against Sweeney, who is on trial for the murder of another girl. The series is based on Ballmer’s book “Living with a Serial Killer”.

10 things you should know

Monday, RTÉ One, 8.30pm

The science and sustainability show returns for its 10th series, presented by TV boffins Catriona Devereaux, Amy Hassett, Fergus McAuliffe and Jonathan McCrea, and this first episode promises plenty of good fun as the team and the gang go shark hunting in Tralee- Bay in Co Kerry. researchers who aim to track and tag some of the 71 different species of sharks, stingrays and stingrays found here. With many of these species on the Red List of Threatened Species, it has become vital to learn more about these creatures so that we can better protect them. It then travels to Co Wicklow to the data scientists who are working hard to save our precious peatlands using AI and satellite technology.

Gunpowder siege

Monday, Sky History & Now, 9pm

Ahead of Bonfire Night, here’s a reminder of why 5 November 1605 is a key date in British history. That day, a group of Roman Catholic fanatics planned to blow up the Parliament building and provoke a Catholic uprising. The conspirators’ aim was to kill the Protestant King James and put his daughter Elizabeth on the throne, but the plot was foiled and this three-part docu-drama reimagines the most famous plot in British history and promises to dispel several myths about the events, focusing on the three main conspirators, Robert Catesby, Thomas Wintoury and Thomas Percy, who are on the run in England after the arrest and torture of Guy Fawkes, who is caught before he can detonate the explosives.

Shetland Islands

Wednesday, BBC One, 9pm

The crime drama set in the Scottish archipelago returns for its ninth series, with Ashley Jensen and Alison O’Donnell reprising their roles as detectives Ruth Calder and Alison ‘Tosh’ McIntosh. In this new series, Calder and Tosh tackle a missing persons case that’s also very personal: Tosh’s friend Annie Bette and her young son Noah have disappeared, and as the two detectives begin to investigate, they learn that Annie and her husband Ian are estranged and encounter Professor Euan Rossi, who claims to have been Annie’s tutor at Oxford and traveled to the Shetland Islands after receiving a voicemail from Annie.

Lucan

Wednesday, BBC Two, 9pm

This is one of the greatest missing persons mysteries of modern times – what happened to Lord Lucan? The aristocrat disappeared 50 years ago; soon after, the body of his children’s nanny, Sandra Rivett, was found in a post bag in Belgravia, and a worldwide manhunt began for her killer, Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan. Despite numerous sightings, no one has ever found the prime suspect in Rivette’s murder. Then there is a twist in the tale: in 2004, Neil Berryman, a construction worker from Hampshire who was adopted, learns that he is actually the natural son of a murdered nanny. This three-part series follows Berryman’s 17-year journey to learn more about his birth mother’s life and find her killer with the help of investigative journalist Glen Campbell.

Christy Brown: Self Portrait

Wednesday, RTÉ One, 9.35pm

Daniel Day-Lewis won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Christy Brown in My Left Leg, but the makers of this 50-minute documentary want to go beyond the film to show how Brown’s poetry transcended his physical disability to achieve universal truths. . Writer-director Alex Werner is set to paint an “unfiltered and deeply human” look at Brown’s life and work, drawing on his poems, letters and other writings. Aidan Gillen is the narrator and Saoirse Ronan reads Brown’s poetry, bringing it to life, while Jim Sheridan, John Benville, Mary Duffy and Peter Sheridan talk about Brown’s life and art.

Junior dispatcher

Friday, channel 4, 20:00

It had to happen. Taskmaster allowed grown-up celebrities to act like big kids, so now it’s the turn of real kids to do wacky tasks that seriously test your perception of reality. This spin-off of the hit show takes place in the all-new, kid-friendly Taskmaster home and is hosted by junior Taskmaster Rose Matafeo and her skilled sidekick Mike Wozniak, who will present surreal challenges to their young contestants of all ages. between nine and 11 years. “Being appointed junior manager is one of the greatest honors in my already extremely successful career. I’m looking forward to the power going to my head,” Matafeo says, while Wozniak adds, “All I wanted to be when I grew up was Little Alex Horne (or a regional manager for a major highway service provider). station), so it’s literally a dream come true.”

Streaming

Old

Apple TV+ from Wednesday

Jeff Bridges returns as the titular geriatrician in another adventure game set in a very dangerous land: Afghanistan. In the first series, if you remember, ex-CIA operative Dan Chase (Bridges) was living off the grid in Vermont when an incident with an intruder put him back on the agency’s radar and turned him into a fugitive. Now the hunted becomes the hunter as Dan’s daughter Emily (Alia Shakwat) is kidnapped by the powerful Afghan warlord Faraz Hamzad (Naveed Negaban) and Chase sets out to rescue her. In this task, Dan is assisted by ex-FBI agent Harold Harper (John Lithgow), but there is an added complication: Chase, Harper and Hamzad consider Emily their own daughter.

Countdown: Paul vs. Tyson

From Friday Netflix

Is this the heavyweight fight of the year or another example of how boxing has turned into a circus? In one corner is boxing legend Mike Tyson, 58, who is returning to the ring for his first professional fight since retiring in 2005. In the other corner is YouTube star Jake Paul, who made his ring debut in 2020, but so far has had to wear kid gloves against a series of MMA fighters. This docu-series looks at the build-up to the big fight on November 15th, but did Paul bite off more than he could chew when he faced Tyson? The series also takes us inside the build-up to another highly-anticipated fight on November 15: the rematch between undisputed featherweight champion Katy Taylor and featherweight champion Amanda Serrano.