Keeley Hawes and Freddie Highmore in 'The Assassin.' Courtesy of Amazon Prime Video Share on Facebook Share on X Google Preferred Share to Flipboard Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Send an Email Print the Article Post a Comment Logo text Equal parts stupidly entertaining and simply stupid, AMC+'s new hitwoman dramedy The Assassin gets far on the likable charm of stars Keeley Hawes and Freddie Highmore. Whether that's enough to carry what feels like a one-paragraph outline for a series rather than a fully conceived television season will depend on how you feel about beautiful European locations and hollow plot twists. Just days after finishing these opening six episodes, I remembered nothing that happened in the second half of the season. But I could still probably be cajoled to return for more of Hawes playing 007 and Highmore stammering charmingly. Maybe. Related Stories TV Freddie Highmore Is Back to His British Roots (and Loving It) in 'The Assassin' TV 'Miss Austen': Did Jane Austen's Sister Burn the Author's Letters Out of Cultural Vandalism or Love? The Assassin The Bottom Line Starts off fun, but gets dumber as it goes along. Airdate: Thursday, November 20 (AMC+)Cast: Keeley Hawes, Freddie Highmore, Gerald Kyd, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Devon TerrellCreators: Harry and Jack Williams Both the strengths and limitations of The Assassin are standard operating procedure for creators Harry and Jack Williams, who are masters at hatching an enticing premise - see Rellik, Liar and The Tourist, among other shows - but less successful with following through. After a terrific opening scene in which an assassin makes her way through a house under construction, ruthlessly taking out thugs and henchmen before getting some shocking news, we jump forward 31 years. Julie (Hawes) has retired from her successful career killing people and now lives in a perfectly lovely home in the hills of a perfectly lovely Greek island, rarely interacting with the locals, other than occasionally bickering with town butcher Luka (Gerald Kyd). Which is funny, because she was formerly a different kind of butcher. Edward (Highmore), Julie's estranged son, is coming to the island for a visit. He's a journalist. What kind of journalist? When I say "I haven't the faintest idea," I'm not exaggerating. His career is the flimsiest excuse for one tiny plot detail and nothing else. It doesn't even give him a useful secondary set of skills that might come in handy later. It's bizarrely pointless. Anyway, Edward has news to share with his mother, who he believes is a headhunter. Which is funny, because "headhunter" is a real and non-violent job that sounds like it could relate to a hired killer. So like I said, Julie is retired, but then she gets a call from her former handler offering her three times her normal rate to kill Kayla (Shalom Brune-Franklin). Kayla is in charge of the charitable arm of a mining company owned by her father (Alan Dale, eventually), and she and her less charitable brother Ezra (Devon Terrell) are anchored off the coast of the island on a yacht. Why is Kayla in charge of the charitable arm of an otherwise potentially evil company? Because it's a job title that lets you say "This character must be a good person" without having to have the character do anything good. Julie takes the job but can't pull the trigger, and soon a rather ambitious attempt on her life leaves the island littered with carnage, forces her to reveal her occupation to Edward, and throws the two of them together with Kayla, Ezra and, for no justifiable reason, Luka. Soon, they're all jaunting around a small corner of Europe - Greece, Albania and Establishing Shots of France and London - killing people and trying to stop people from killing them. Oh and Gina Gershon is around as a woman named Marie who likes manga and knows things about Edward's long-absent father. Why manga? I. Haven't. The. Faintest. But she spends an entire episode sitting in a class on comic book art. Just ... drawing. The Assassin gets off to a promising enough start, capably directed by Lisa Mulcahy. The opening sequence and a shootout at a Greek wedding are the two best action sequences in the series. They may, in fact, be the only two truly memorable action sequences in the series - a good way to draw an audience in, but perhaps not the best way to sustain interest. The pilot establishes the strained relationship between Julie and Edward but gives few details on Edward's upbringing, other than that Julie was frequently leaving on "business trips" and she probably wasn't well-suited for motherhood, what with the killing people thing. What matters is that when Julie zips around a country road on a motorcycle with Edward clinging to her in terror, the sight gag works and it's character-appropriate. While some viewers might think of Highmore as a good doctor or an aspiring chocolate factory owner, he'll a