Keeley Hawes and Freddie Highmore lead the cast of crime thriller The Assassin.
Created by Harry and Jack Williams (The Tourist), the series follows a retired assassin living in Greece who is reunited with her estranged son. As he seeks answers about her past, they both find themselves in danger when her history catches up with her.
Other cast members include Gina Gershon, Shalom Brune-Franklin, Jack Davenport, Alan Dale, Gerald Kyd, Devon Terrell, Richard Dormer and David Dencik.
Along with starring in the Amazon show, Hawes and Highmore serve as executive producers. All six episodes were released on July 25, 2025.
Who composed the soundtrack for The Assassin?
The show’s score is by Dominik Scherrer, who previously worked with Harry and Jack Williams on The Tourist, The Missing and Baptiste. He also composed the soundtrack to 2012’s Ripper Street.
Speaking about The Assassin’s soundtrack to NME, Scherrer said he wanted the score to reflect the oscillating tone in the show’s script.
“Some of the fun and excitement in the script is in the extreme contrasts,” Scherrer said. “A dark, thriller-ish scene with a lot of peril will be followed abruptly by hilarious conversations on a Mediterranean beach, for example. Rather than smoothing this over, I wanted the score to accentuate this, as it brings energy to those moments.
“Besides creating modern action cues, using a lot of analogue synths mixed with a live orchestra, a key influence was 1950s Italian pop – like the kind of music Morricone was arranging and producing before he started to score the films we know so well now. The soaring string lines, mixed with twangy guitars and a few exotic instruments, give The Assassin a kind of retro, glamorous Mediterranean feel that’s still cool.”
He added: “The series is set in many different countries, and I wanted to exaggerate the exoticism. I spent a few days in a studio in Athens, recording dulcimers, and plucked and bowed Middle Eastern and Mediterranean instruments, which appear in a few moments in the final score.”
What other songs appear in the show?
A handful of needle drops are scattered across the show’s six episodes, including a pop classic from Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan. You can check out all the songs below.
Episode one
‘Agapi Kalokairini’ – Alexia Vassiliou
‘Favourite Kind Of Girl’ – Gotts Street Park, Flikka
Episode two
N/A
Episode three
‘Pjesa 7 (laveri)’ – TAJçIDO
‘Nuk ka pshtim’ – Boyard Bes
‘God’s Gonna Cut You Down’ – John Grant
Episode four
N/A
Episode five
N/A
Episode six
‘Especially For You’ – Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan
