Kill Jackie, a new crime-caper-comedy-thriller-cum-comeback-vehicle starring Catherine Zeta-Jones, is preposterous nonsense that may have wanted to be Killing Eve but rapidly realised that is a lot harder than it looks, settling for throwing everything – especially heavy artillery – at the wall and seeing what stuck. The show is now streaming on Prime Video.
A freeport-based art business
The story centres on Jackie Price (Zeta-Jones), who has built a successful art business over the last 20 years by exploiting the customs benefits and tax reliefs available in certain exclusionary zones known as freeports. She acquires art, stores it in a warehouse, and invites rich people to view, bid on, and buy it. The early scenes suggest much more financial detail is coming, but the narrative soon shifts to action.
A past that catches up
Life is good for Jackie, but perhaps a bit boring, which may explain why Zeta-Jones delivers all her lines in a manner suggesting she has recently received a brick to the head. But Jackie has a past, and that past is about to catch up with her. The first clue is a dead body in the flat across from hers, which she takes as a warning. Before she can flee, masked intruders surround her, but she has anticipated this – the paintings on the walls rise to reveal machine guns that dispatch the men.
The woman who installed the machine gun arrangement, Karenina (Sidse Babett Knudsen), cheerfully reveals while sawing up the corpses that she is moving into assassination work and is on probation with the Seven Demons, the most feared assassin gang. Her next job is Jackie herself. Jackie takes her semi-competent assistant Charlie (Hattie Hook) and fanciable lawyer Sam (Daniel Ings) along for protection, as other associates begin to fall victim.
Substitutes for character and plot
The show substitutes gunfights, fistfights, ear-bitings, car chases and other set pieces for character, plot and the credible development of either. Jackie mono-intones in droning voiceovers that bedevil the gaps between action scenes. The inaugural episode closes with her asking how to warn others of biblical horrors without being needlessly dramatic. Kill Jackie is on Prime Video now.
