By Steve Pond

In the 1971 novel “The Day of the Jackal” by Frederick Forsyth and the 1973 film adaptation by Fred Zinnemann, there was not much of a question about who the Jackal was: a remorseless assassin who had been hired to kill French president Charles de Gaulle. Either he was going to die or de Gaulle was.

But Peacock’s new TV version, created by Ronan Bennett, is different — partly because it’s a continuing series, so you expect its title character to survive, and partly because the Jackal is played by Eddie Redmayne, whose innate likability means that we’re bound to root for him at least some of the time.