Lucky, Apple TV, now
****
Between Lucky, the tale of a woman hustler on the run, and Prime Video’s Ride or Die with Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer, this is shaping up to be a Thelma and Louise kind of week.
The titular conwoman in Lucky is played by Anya Taylor-Joy, whose face you will know from The Queen’s Gambit. In that drama, Taylor-Joy’s character used her chess skills to survive. Here, as her nickname suggests, Lucky relies on pure chance. Or does she?
Created by Jonathan Tropper (Your Friends and Neighbours) from the novel by Marissa Stapley, the seven-part series opens when the good times are rolling for Lucky. She and her husband Cary (Drew Starkey) are in an expensive suite in Vegas with suitcases stuffed with cash. In the morning, they will leave the US to start a new life.
But Lucky wakes to find her husband and the money gone. So begins a series of cat-and-mouse chases. Lucky is after Cary. An FBI agent is after Lucky. A mob boss (Annette Bening), who also happens to be Cary’s mother, is also after Lucky. Ditto the rich guy at the top of the fuel scam (William Fichtner).
What Lucky wants are answers, particularly from her dad John, currently serving a spell in jail. John is played by Timothy Olyphant, who in another life was Deputy US Marshal Raylan Givens of Justified fame. While Olyphant still radiates the same twinkly-eyed charm as Marshal Givens, the hair has gone grey. Well, of course he suits it. He seems to have access to a primo hairstylist in prison, too.
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Flashbacks fill us in on Lucky’s childhood and time spent as one half of a Paper Moon-style con artist partnership with her father. He couldn’t put food on the table at the same time every night, never mind in the same kitchen, but now and then a scam would pay big, and it was all-you-can-eat time at a fancy hotel.
The character of Lucky, like the series as a whole, relies on a few sleight-of-hand moves and suspension of disbelief. We have to believe that this slight young woman can fight off assassins, take on venomous snakes with nothing but a rock, and walk away from car smashes.
Taylor-Joy manages it convincingly, her character even finding time along the way to do small favours for people. Lucky benefits from the kindness of others in return, which raises the question of whether she is naturally fortunate or whether karma is at work.
Lucky doesn’t spend much time contemplating this or much else. She’s a woman of action, and the storyline gives her plenty of it.
Two episodes in, Bening’s mob boss has not yet crossed paths with Lucky. What a clash that will be. Bening is terrific as the hard-boiled Priscilla who has no time for macho antics. “I forgot how exhausting your bravado can be,” she tells Olyphant’s character.
Like Lucky, and the female FBI agent, Priscilla just wants to get the job done quickly and quietly and go home. They’ll be lucky.
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