‘The Day Of The Jackal’ Becomes Peacock’s Most-Watched Original Drama Series After 75 Days

EXCLUSIVE: The Day of the Jackal seems to have been a sleeper hit for Peacock.

The Eddie Redmayne-led political thriller has now become the streamer’s most-watched new original drama series ever after 75 days of viewership, NBCUniversal says.

Apparently, the series has found success globally as well, becoming the biggest new series launch ever on Sky. As is typical, NBCU didn’t provide exact numbers, though it was previously revealed that the first episode reached 4.6M viewers on Sky alone in its first 28 days.

The Day of the Jackal did also debut as one of the top 10 streaming original dramas during its debut week in the U.S. on November 14, per Nielsen. However, it was under the 320M streaming minute threshold to make it onto Nielsen’s overall streaming originals list for that interval.

It also ranked among streaming dramas again the week of its finale, on December 12, though it once again didn’t rank on the overall streaming originals list.

Still, this recent milestone is an indication that the series continues to gain momentum, rather than lose it as is common with streaming series. It’s no wonder Peacock and Sky handed it a pretty swift renewal following the Season 1 finale.

Adapted by Ronan Bennett from the hit Frederick Forsyth novel, Season 1 of The Day of the Jackal follows an unrivaled and highly elusive lone assassin, the Jackal (Redmayne), who makes his living carrying out hits for the highest fee. But following his latest kill, he meets his match in a tenacious British intelligence officer (Lynch) who starts to track down the Jackal in a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase across Europe, leaving destruction in its wake. 

Cast also includes Úrsula Corberó, Charles Dance, Richard Dormer, Chukwudi Iwuji, Lia Williams, Khalid Abdalla, Eleanor Matsuura, Jonjo O’Neill and Sule Rimi.