The Assassin

Neither funny nor gripping so far fetched it becomes unbelievable-yes I know it's fiction-but theres got be something to hang your hat on. Scenery great, plot and storyline 2/10. Nothing in the first episode made me want to watch any more. Whacking great plot holes, and despite being a Keely Hawes fan, her talents are wasted by this mish mash of clichéd set pieces and disconnected story.

Love Keeley Hawes & Freddie Highmore in everything they've done, such talented actors. In this they are also fabulous but the script & some of the cast let them down. It went from a fun farce to what felt like a dated daytime soap opera. Not great & certainly not interesting enough to make me want to watch more than the 1st episode & that was painful.

What potential, what disappointment. Have the script writers lost their creativity.

I don't enjoy people shouting abuse at each other, it doesn't make for an intelligent thriller and feels like a 3rd rate soap opera.

I watched 1 and a bit episodes and had to turn it off.

People say it's the new Dept Q but I think it was a marketing ploy.

I was barely able to make it through the first episode, which is never a good sign. After a generic bit of bish bash boshery set in the past, we find a supposedly retired Julie (Hawes) living a grumpy secluded life on an otherwise idyllic Mediterranean small island buying Wagu for her soon to arrive son, Edward (Highmore), whom she hasn't see in years. Highmore seems to be still locked in to his Good Doctor character, the same nervous energy and inability to look even his mother in the eye - I wondered if he was supposed to be on the spectrum. Anyway, he turns out to be vegan - the hilarity is deadening. Julie gets a call from her old boss to do one last hit - as you do - as the target is handily located on a boat offshore. By the magic of some spidey sense plot device, Julie twigs the voice isn't her real boss. This is the level of 'noooo...really!... I never' brainmelt this show is happy to dredge.

There is absolutely no chemistry between the two leads - Highmore looks embarrassed to be there. So much so that a scene with them at a picnic table is mostly made up of head on single shots of each of them, as if they couldn't stand to do the scene together.

The dialogue is clunky AF. The characters paper thin. The humour is witless and delivered with no sense of timing.

An utterly joyless and less thrilling work will be hard to find in 2025.

I rarely bother writing reviews, but having read some of the reviews here, felt I had to say a few things, as it seems people are taking this series far too seriously and not getting the daft and dry British humour of the show.

Before watching, I guessed this would be a ludicrous plot and would be a parody of the whole "retired assassin" genre. I mean, Keeley Hawes as a menopausal super assassin and her son played by the eternally child-like Freddie Highmore? Yeah, this is no John Wick lol.

Of course it's not a masterpiece, but it's great fun throughout, never gets boring and is well written and acted - and ridiculously violent and gory for good measure. It's a massive pisstake, as we say in the UK, of the entire "badass comes back from retirement" movie/TV trope. You almost expect Keeley Hawes character to get out a tissue and wipe the blood off her son's cheek throughout.

It's completely unbelievable, but then that's the point. It's also incredibly funny and enjoyable, and "knows" it is ridiculous, so it knowingly takes us viewers along for the ride. Just sit back and enjoy that ride and you'll not be disappointed.