Anya Taylor-Joy’s plucky con artist will keep you guessing

After stealing millions, Lucky (Anya Taylor-Joy) and her husband Cary (Drew Starkey) crack open the champagne on a Vegas rooftop. Tomorrow, they’ll wave goodbye to a life of crime before anyone realises the money is missing. Or at least, that’s what Lucky thought the plan was. When she wakes up in their luxury hotel suite after toasting a successful heist, Cary and the suitcases of cash are gone. Her husband has double-crossed her and left her to take the wrap. 

This seven-part thriller from Your Friends & Neighbors creator Jonathan Tropper is a breathless affair from the off. Within the first 10 minutes, Lucky is already ducking and diving through Caesars Palace with the FBI on her heels. You’ll have to accept that she really lives up to her name – somehow, Lucky manages to slip out of one of the most surveilled buildings in Vegas (and possibly North America) thanks to quick thinking and a costume change.  But it’s instantly gripping, filled with twists and lots of fun. Showing off the action chops she honed in 2024’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Taylor-Joy is riveting as Lucky, a gimlet-eyed opportunist with a conscience. Well, some of the time.

It soon becomes clear that her antihero is in a double bind. She isn’t just running from wily FBI agent Billie Rand (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor), but also from Cary’s formidable mother Priscilla (Annette Bening), a lynchpin of the crime syndicate they stole the millions from. Lucky is the fleet-fingered daughter of a small-time conman (Timothy Olyphant), but Cary has ties to a much bigger and nastier operation led by shadowy mafioso Whittaker (William Fichtner). If she can’t stay hidden, it’s a choice between life behind bars or death.

Adapted from a pulpy bestselling novel by Marissa Stapley, Lucky doesn’t always escape cliché, especially in flashback sequences that reveal her itinerant upbringing pinging with her dad from grift to grift. Along the way, the machinations of Priscilla’s crime syndicate are sometimes belaboured by the writers, so it’s a good job that Lucky’s female characters are so compelling. Ellis-Taylor’s single-minded FBI agent is a convincing mix of belligerence and exhaustion, while Bening’s mob matriarch is a surprisingly vulnerable villain. She can be terrifying but she doesn’t hide her pain.

After the first two episodes premiere on July 15, the remaining five will be rolled out weekly. Presumably, Apple TV+ bosses are confident that Lucky can charm a large audience, and they probably aren’t deluded. There’s a constant sense of threat here and a smart overarching narrative. Can Taylor-Joy’s savvy scammer find a way to appease Priscilla and evade the clutches of Agent Rand? She should be so Lucky – but you’ll want to find out how close she comes. Even with some corny and convoluted moments, Lucky works all the right angles. 

‘Lucky’ is on Apple TV+ from July 15

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