Kill Jackie (2026)

The premise. Jackie Price spent twenty years living the wealthy, luxurious life after escaping a dangerous past as an international cocaine dealer. Art dealing, mostly — jet-setting between galleries, exploiting a Bilbao freeport to trade fine art tax-free while staying anonymous. Then life got a little boring. Then she found out the Seven Demons — a squad of the world's most terrifying hitmen — have been hired to kill her. Jackie's response is the whole show in one decision: she does not run. She hunts them first, one by one, using the dark-web connections and brutal ingenuity she spent two decades pretending she had retired. It is pulp with the safety off, and it knows exactly what it is.

The cast. Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Jackie Price, and the role is a homecoming with teeth: it marks the first time she has used her native Welsh accent in a major screen role, a detail that matters because the show keeps dragging Jackie back to Swansea and the buried secrets there. Zeta-Jones is an Oscar, BAFTA, and Tony winner — Chicago, The Mask of Zorro, Traffic, Ocean's Twelve — and more recently Morticia Addams in Netflix's Wednesday; here she gets to be glamorous and lethal in the same frame, and she also executive-produces. Daniel Ings (The Crown, Sex Education, The Gentlemen) plays Sam, Jackie's buttoned-up tax lawyer and long-held, faintly comic crush, thrown wildly out of his depth when he ends up on the run beside her. The ensemble around them is a character actor's hall of fame: Sidse Babett Knudsen (Borgen) as Karenina, Óscar Jaenada as Zigor, Hattie Hook as Charlie, Darci Shaw as Gwen, Julian Rhind-Tutt as Friedrich, Christine Adams as The Doc, Raff Law as Sean Harper — "The Yank" — plus Bill Paterson as Ewan, Ron Perlman as Sean Senior, Julian Barratt, Enzo Cilenti, and Jonathan Cake. The Seven Demons themselves are built to be deployed one terrifying weirdo at a time, which is exactly how an assassin-of-the-week engine survives eight episodes.

The season. Eight episodes, forty-two to forty-eight minutes each, premiering October 2, 2026 — on Prime Video in the UK, Ireland, and select international markets, and on AMC+ in the United States with weekly episodes. It is adapted from Nick Harkaway's novel The Price You Pay, written under his pseudonym Aidan Truhen, and the adaptation team is a genre murderers' row: Tom Butterworth (Gangs of London) as writer-showrunner, co-created with Conor Keane, Peter Lawson (of John Wick), and Damon Thomas (Killing Eve), who also directs alongside Dawn Shadforth and Sophie Muller. Fremantle and Steel Springs Pictures produce with Amazon MGM Studios; Matteo Zingales composes, with Ladyhawke's "The Price You Pay" as the opening theme. The production is genuinely globe-spanning — Bilbao freeports, Swansea homecomings — which gives the show its jet-set texture and its dry British humor running underneath the hard-edged action.

The reception. Here is where it gets interesting, because the critical response has been genuinely split — and the split is instructive. The believers point to the two leads (Zeta-Jones's sly command, Ings's frightened comic counterpoint), the top-notch editing, cinematography, fight choreography, and soundtrack, and the sheer confidence of the premise. The skeptics — CBR's review ran under the headline "Can't Save a Thriller With No Heart" — argue the show never builds the foundation for real emotional depth, that Jackie's resources arrive a little too conveniently to sustain suspense, and that it doesn't stand out against a crowded thriller shelf. Both camps are describing the same show accurately. The question is whether you think "thriller with no heart" is a flaw or the entire point. Vivian's position, for the record: when a show is this committed to being entertainment first — when it trusts its lead, trusts its premise, and refuses to be embarrassed about the pulp — the heart is optional. The fun is the point. Grade: A.

The cultural footprint. Kill Jackie sits at the center of the female-led action wave — the years-long correction to decades of women serving as the revenge plot's motivation rather than its engine. Jackie is not a victim seeking justice; she is a retired professional with a target on her back and twenty years of hard-won life to protect. The ex-criminal dragged back in is one of crime fiction's oldest structures, and handing it to a woman in her fifties who has already won once — and is furious about having to win again — feels like the version the genre has been waiting for. It also lands in the middle of the IP gold rush: adapted from a pseudonymous literary thriller, built by the teams behind Killing Eve, Gangs of London, and John Wick, premiering simultaneously across Prime Video and AMC+ with a New York Comic Con showcase. The industry is betting that star-driven, globe-trotting pulp still moves the needle. Judging by the audience response, the bet is paying.

Who it's for. Anyone who thinks John Wick needed a Welsh art dealer, Killing Eve fans who miss the glamour-meets-menace chemistry, and viewers who want their thrillers to stop apologizing for being fun. If you need your crime dramas to ache, look elsewhere. If you want eight episodes of Catherine Zeta-Jones hunting assassins who made the mistake of hunting her first — welcome to the most purely fun pulp premise on television right now.

Verdict: A — Trash with a crown on: the most purely fun pulp premise of the year, and it knows exactly what it is.