Heist Review – You crave Sophie Turner’s triumph in this wild thriller | television

TThe trick, Zara Dunne tells her new subordinate as she wanders into the deal-processing hall of the pension management company they now work for, is not to think about the fact that every day that passes is another day wasted. And to find out where the beautiful biscuits are. This is very good advice for anyone in their 20s starting their first job, but especially one named Myrtle, such as this one, who I imagine has already lost a lot of stuffing due to her peers’ reactions to this strange parental choice of surname.

However, soon they’re all in need of much more relief than even a chocolate bar can provide, as a team of armed villains invade the Earth. From there, the brilliant new six-part thriller Steal kicks into high gear and doesn’t let up for a moment. The bad guys — not wearing masks, but rather advanced, precise prosthetics that can fool all the facial recognition software the police will soon apply to CCTV footage — flock to Zara (Sophie Turner, who continues to do great work post-Game of Thrones), Myrtle (Eloise Thomas), Zara’s friend and colleague Luke (Archie Madekwe) and the rest of the ranks in one conference room while the management committee shuts down in another. After being brutally beaten so that no one will doubt the evil gang’s loyalty, Luke and Zara are snatched away and forced to help them execute a set of deals worth £4 billion, all of which the committee is forced to sign off on. At some point, Luke breaks down and Zara has to step in to save the day. She was hailed as a hero once the thieves completed their high-tech heist and left the building.

All, of course, is not as it seems. The first twist comes in the closing moments of the brilliantly suspenseful opening hour (which keeps things fresh by making the villains smart, clever and very quietly evil, and unleashes the financial shenanigans with enough violence to keep things gripping but not disgusting). Spoiler alert, unless you’ve watched a heist drama before or read any of the hype surrounding the show, Zara is involved in this.

Or is it? As the police investigation begins, led by DCI Reece Kovach (Jacob Fortune Lloyd), a brilliant detective but a man with secrets of his own, the story expands and takes us on a wild ride through layers of deception, shifting alliances and varying degrees of necessary silliness before we bid farewell, breathless and highly amused, safely at the end. It’s the first screenplay by Sotiris Nikias, but he’s honed his craft writing crime novels under the pseudonym Ray Celestine, and we’re all reaping the benefits here.

While Luke is soon hopelessly broken by events, Zara is made of tougher stuff. Her survival instincts, rooted in her upbringing by her alcoholic, volatile mother Haley (there are scenes of such passionate brutality between Turner and Anastasia Healy as Haley that I would gladly watch a purely domestic drama about them) soon bring her into battle against those who seek to destroy her. Turner does a good job of maintaining Zara’s credibility – she’s a cornered dog, not a superhero – and you long for her triumph.

However, amidst all the events, Steal finds room to think. Although the series never strays away from narrative, it becomes a meditation on the idea that the love of money is the root of all evil. The world of finance is portrayed as one of gambling at its core – gambling by a small number of people who only use other people’s money and who receive disproportionate rewards for doing so. Each management committee receives £1m a year, plus guaranteed bonuses, while the likes of Zara and Luke earn a fraction of that, even if you take biscuits into account. Steele says that dissatisfaction can only build up in a company, if it multiplies the experience enough times and continues to concentrate the wealth generated by many in the hands of fewer and fewer individuals, in society and around the world. What happens next? I’m sure Zara can take care of herself and her crypto wallet, but the rest of us – increasingly at the mercy of opaque financial systems and players who think about nothing but extracting wealth – might want to start getting organized.