AMC+'s 'Kill Jackie' Fails to Stick Despite Zeta-Jones — SkimNews
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- Catherine Zeta-Jones stars as Jackie Prince, a former drug queenpin turned luxury art dealer who discovers a hit squad called the Seven Demons has been hired to assassinate her, kicking off a cross-continent quest to find the mastermind.
- "Kill Jackie" adapts Nick Harkaway's 2018 novel "The Price You Pay" via writers Conor Keane, Tom Butterworth, Peter Lawson, and Damon Thomas, with the first of eight episodes debuting Oct. 2 on AMC+ and the remainder airing weekly on Fridays.
- The pilot opens in Bilbao, Spain, where Jackie and assistant Charlie (Hattie Hook) execute a $60 million art deal before returning to London, where Jackie is ambushed in her apartment and flees to a safehouse.
- The narrative becomes convoluted by Episode 3, weighed down by countless characters, unserious assassins, and flashy locations, leaving viewers — and Jackie — unsure of where the story is going.
- The Seven Demons are defined by quirks like an assassin who dances in bowling shoes to James Brown, while a former member named Zigor (Óscar Jaenada) comes off as more terrifying than the entire active crew combined.
- The review places "Kill Jackie" below "Kill Bill" and Apple TV's "Lucky", calling both "far more inspired and sharper" than the new series, and noting Jackie herself lacks the depth and texture to anchor eight episodes.
- AMC+ is entering a streaming black-comedy field already populated by Netflix's "The Gentlemen" and "Black Doves" and Paramount+'s "MobLand," but the reviewer argues the show is "neither witty enough to be funny nor serious enough to become engrossing."
Why it matters: AMC+ is paying prestige prices — a 2018 Harkaway source novel, a movie-star lead, an eight-episode order — to enter a streaming black-comedy lane already led by tighter Netflix and Apple TV+ thrillers. If the review's verdict holds, the platform's October debut lands as a glossy placeholder rather than a breakout.
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