Catherine Zeta-Jones being hunted across Europe by seven of the world’s deadliest assassins is already a fairly irresistible proposition. Give her a wicked sense of humour, a violent criminal history and permission to beat the living hell out of anyone standing in her way, and Kill Jackie has all the ingredients of a gleefully unhinged action thriller.

Based on Nick Harkaway’s acclaimed novel The Price You Pay, written under the pseudonym Aidan Truhen, the eight-part series casts Zeta-Jones as Jackie Price, a former international drug smuggler who has spent two decades hiding behind a glamorous new existence in the art world. When the Seven Demons are contracted to kill her, however, Jackie discovers that the dangerous woman she thought she had buried is still very much alive – and perhaps a little too excited to be back.

But for creator and executive producer Peter Lawson, the assassins, gangster mythology and darkly comic violence were only part of the attraction. As the adaptation evolved, so too did its interest in the woman underneath Jackie’s carefully constructed facade. Lawson and showrunner Tom Butterworth realised that the series needed an emotional foundation capable of sustaining eight hours of television, eventually building questions of family, identity and belonging into the carnage.