‘Day of the Jackal’ Finds New Lead Writer in ‘Lockerbie: A Search for Truth’ Scribe David Harrower as Creator Ronan Bennett Steps Back (EXCLUSIVE)

“Day of the Jackal,” the Eddie Redmayne-fronted TV spy series that became a ratings smash for both Sky and Peacock last year, has a new lead writer for its second series.

Ronan Bennett, who created the show, produced by Carnival Films and a modern day interpretation of Frederick Forsyth’s novel and its hit 1973 film adaptation about a globe-trotting assassin and the intelligence officer on his tail, is stepping back from his writing duties due to other commitments but will continue to exec produce.

For Bennett’s replacement, Carnival has turned to David Harrower, who created its critically acclaimed “Lockerbie: A Search for Truth” drama starring Colin Firth and chronicling the decades-long quest to find the culprits of 1988’s Pam Am Flight 103 bombing. “Lockerbie” was also aired by both Sky and Peacock.

Speaking to Variety recently, Carnival CEO Gareth Neame acknowledged that while the first season of the “Day of the Jackal” featured a completely different plot to the original, it had the “same dynamic between the hunter and the hunted” and included numerous references to the film. For season two, due to start production in the coming months, he said there were still “lots of elements from [Forsyth’s] novel that we didn’t utilize in season one” that would appear.

“Hopefully it’s going to be another very lavish, slickly directed, well acted, high-octane twist and turn thriller,” he said.

Alongside “Day of the Jackal,” Bennett — who first made a name for himself on TV as the creator of “Top Boy” — has recently been behind Paramount+ series “MobLand,” starring Tom Hardy and Pierce Brosnan that was renewed for a second season in June this year. In August, it was announced that Bennett was returning to U.K. network Channel 4 for the first time since “Top Boy” with “Army of Shadows,” a six-part drama series inspired by Jean Pierre Melville’s 1969 film and Joseph Kessel’s book of the same name about the French Resistance during WWII, this time set in a near-future authoritarian Britain.

Starring Redmayne as the eponymous hitman and Lashana Lynch as an MI6 agent, “The Day of the Jackal” became Sky’s biggest Original series ever with 3 million viewers in its first week in November 2024, ahead of “House of the Dragon” and “Chernobyl.” In the U.S., it became Peacock’s most-watched new original drama series ever after 75 days of viewership, according to NBCUniversal in February of this year.