Bannerman: New Adaptation Of Hit Spy Thriller Novels Is Coming To Screens

Published Oct 22, 2026, 1:40 PM EDT

Paulina is a Contributor for ScreenRant, writing about books. After starting her career reporting breaking news as an undergrad, Paulina completed a Master of Arts in Journalism from NYU in 2026. She has spent the last four years writing about books and pop culture as a freelance journalist, including for Texas Monthly, The Daily Beast, and her Substack, Alienated Young Woman.

With its highly anticipated fifth season hitting screens next year, and a new book (Chain Reaction) available now, Reacher is at the top of an ever-growing roster of hit TV series inspired by beloved spy-thriller novel series. From the Alan Ritchson-led vehicle to Slow Horses to The Terminal List (which returned this month), audiences can’t get enough of endless sequential thrillers about secret agents on the hunt for redemption or revenge.

Now, AMC and Netflix are following suit with a new show inspired by a (much shorter) beloved spy thriller book series from the ‘80s and ‘90s. With an Emmy winner already attached, it’s shaping up to be a hit.

A New Assassin Thriller Comes To The Small Screen

Netflix and AMC announced Monday that they will co-produce Bannerman, a series inspired by John R. Maxim’s popular spy thriller novels, with Emmy winner Jeff Daniels attached to star.

The book series follows Paul Bannerman, an ex-assassin living in a quiet Connecticut suburb where covert operatives go to “retire”—until he and his colleagues are forced to go on the run from their former employers and a host of enemies who want them dead.

Maxim published five Bannerman books between 1989 and 2003: The Bannerman Solution, The Bannerman Effect, Bannerman’s Law, Bannerman’s Promise, and Bannerman’s Ghosts. Though Paul Bannerman is the series’ main protagonist, several novels follow his “people”—fellow ex-assassins on the run—as they chase enemies and take revenge.

Though Daniels is set to appear in the show, he won't be playing the title character. Instead, Daniels will play detective Raymond Lesko, a prominent foe of Bannerman.

Lesko is even one of the narrators of The Bannerman Solution. In that novel, he’s a former NYPD detective reeling from the death of his partner, now bent on hunting down Bannerman and his colleagues. Deadline, which broke the news of Daniels’ casting, teased that viewers will see Lesko working as a security guard after being fired from the NYPD, and that his character will be “pulled out of retirement when he learns that his daughter—the only person alive he truly cares about—is dating a man who may even be more dangerous than he is.”

The rest of the cast, including the role of Bannerman himself, is still under wraps, though Deadline reports that AMC is “going for big names.” However, the book series has a sprawling ensemble that includes many of Bannerman's fellow "retired" assassins, their accomplices, and their many, many enemies, so there's plenty of opportunity for more stars to join the series, especially if AMC plans to adapt all five novels.

Most plot details for the series are also under wraps. However, AMC has released a premise:

"Paul Bannerman was once his nation’s deadliest weapon–a top covert operative heading up the most lethal group of contract agents and network specialists in all of Europe. Now Bannerman is a liability—an unpredictable loose cannon that could irreparably damage America’s shaky intelligence structure, if he chose to. So the decision has come down from the top: Bannerman and his people must be eliminated. Suddenly death is running in Westport, Connecticut—one in a nationwide network of secret 'halfway towns' where the country’s most dangerous former agents have been “retired.” At war with powerful elements within his own government—a war not of his making— Bannerman has been lured here to this place of yard sales, mini-vans, commuter trains, and murder. The plan is for Bannerman and those he ran to die here, quietly. But Bannerman has other plans.

That description seems closely aligned with the first Bannerman novel, The Bannerman Solution, which follows the assassin in the immediate aftermath of learning that his former employers have ordered his death.

The show does not yet have a release date, but it already has a seasoned creative team attached. Lethal Weapon screenwriter James Black co-wrote the series with Craig Silverstein, executive producer of spy drama The Old Man. Bannerman will premiere first on AMC, then stream on Netflix after 90 days.