Sometimes, the recipe for great TV isn’t complicated: simply find good material, hire superb actors, assemble a collection of proficient directors, and voilà!
Such is the case with Lucky, Jonathan Tropper’s (Your Friends & Neighbors) breakneck adaptation of Marissa Stapley’s 2021 novel that’s electrified by a terrific cast led by The Queen’s Gambit star Anya Taylor-Joy, along with Timothy Olyphant, Annette Bening, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Clifton Collins Jr., and William Fichtner.
Ingredients don’t come much better than that, and from thrilling start to satisfying finish, Apple TV’s seven-part miniseries proves an unqualified 2026 standout.
Executive-produced by Reese Witherspoon and featuring an original main title theme song by Fiona Apple, Lucky (July 15) commences with Luciana “Lucky” Armstrong (Taylor-Joy) fleeing FBI agents in and around a collection of semi-trucks, her bleach-blonde short hair as striking as her harried movements.
This is merely a tease of things to come, since Tropper’s show subsequently leaps backward to the prior evening to watch redheaded Lucky and husband Cary (Drew Starkey) celebrate what snippets of dialogue reveal to be a seemingly successful heist. Preparing to depart America come morning (before their theft is detected), they spend a final night in Vegas, toasting both their old selves and the new ones on the imminent horizon.
Following that champagne toast on the roof of Caesar’s Palace, Lucky awakens with a hangover worthy of The Hangover, and she quickly discovers that Cary is gone, as is the suitcase full of cash that was their ticket out of the country. Before she can process this calamitous situation, FBI Special Agents Billie Rand (Ellis-Taylor) and Eli Gates (Mo McRae) arrive at the casino looking for the duo.
Thus, a flight from justice ensues, and as she searches for a path to safety, a background TV report fills in the contextual details: Lucky and Cary are wanted for pilfering $10 million that was never recovered after the FBI broke up a West Coast gas scam that defrauded the government out of a cool $200 million.
Lucky is in big trouble, and Taylor-Joy’s darting eyes and purposeful comportment immediately indicate that she’s both terrified and in total control of herself—a professional using well-honed skills to escape the corner she’s been backed into. This initial sequence moves like gangbusters, complicated by Lucky running into and bolting from Dutch (Collins Jr.), and punctuated by more than one clever ruse perpetrated by the desperate heroine.
As far as opening salvos go, it’s a doozy.
Once in the (temporary) clear, Lucky is contacted by John (Olyphant), her father, who’s an inmate at LOMPOC federal prison. John reassures her that she’s capable of handling this mess, which, it turns out, is really his fault. An inveterate con man who schooled his lone daughter in the tricks of his fraudulent trade, John says he loves his daughter while simultaneously showing her that he’s all about duplicity. Even after their chat, his voice remains lodged in Lucky’s head as she tries to figure out whether Cary has swindled her, been kidnapped, or fallen victim to some other type of misfortune.
That last possibility isn’t far-fetched, since multiple dangerous forces operate in Lucky. As it charts its protagonist’s efforts to make heads or tails of her dilemma, Tropper’s series—briskly helmed by Jonathan van Tulleken (Shōgun, Dope Thief), Greg Yaitanes (Spider-Noir, House of the Dragon), and Jet Wilkinson (The Testaments, Imperfect Women)—fills in the details of her circumstances.
That begins with Priscilla (Bening), who was busted alongside John for the aforementioned gas scam and yet earned her release from prison courtesy of her menacing boss Wayne Whittaker (Fichtner). Embracing her newfound villainous phase (see also Dutton Ranch), Bening cuts a scarily ruthless figure as Priscilla, whose fury stems from the fact that she and Wayne have been stolen from twice—first by John, and now by Lucky and Cary.
Lucky is caught between Rand and Priscilla, both of whom are intimately connected to her, and Lucky repeatedly squeezes her from all sides, forcing her to use her grifter gifts to slip out of harrowingly tight spots. Disguises and deceptions go hand-in-hand with foot and car chases, as well as the occasional shootout and bit of torture, the last perpetrated by Dutch, a henchman whom Collins embodies with chilly stoicism.
With few words, Collins and Bening convey Priscilla and Dutch’s long-standing trust and understanding, and if Ellis-Taylor and McRae’s dynamic (she single-minded and insubordinate, he supportive and concerned) is clichéd, the actors have a comfortable rapport that makes them more than just narrative devices.
Lucky, however, is fueled by Taylor-Joy, whose performance is a pitch-perfect blend of external steeliness and internal sensitivity, her character at once an immensely talented trickster and a wounded woman wrestling with the abandonment of her husband and the corrosive lessons of (and her love-hate feelings for) her father.
Their relationship is a tad familiar (Catch Me If You Can comes to mind), but Taylor-Joy and Olyphant (here reunited with his Justified: City Primeval co-star Ellis-Taylor) are so fantastic that it doesn’t matter. Especially in the series’ second half, it’s a thrill to watch them navigate their trust and resentment issues at the same time that they endeavor to avoid being put away by Rand and killed by Priscilla and Wayne.
Intermittent flashbacks flesh out Lucky and John’s unhealthy past without interfering with the material’s full-speed-ahead momentum, and Lucky gains urgency as the story gets knottier.
Unsurprisingly, things aren’t exactly what they seem at any given moment of Tropper’s latest, and its mixture of character-driven drama and high-stakes action is expertly realized, aided by scripts that are awash in small touches which suggest that these men and women have lives, and pasts, outside the confines of this particular story.
Most of all, though, it’s a showcase for its leading lady, whose first starring TV role since 2020’s The Queen’s Gambit makes full use of her uniquely seductive, feline intensity.
Less a reinvention of its crime-genre form than a confident and gripping execution of it, Lucky is as crafty and compelling as Taylor-Joy’s on-the-run crook. Refusing to overstay its welcome or to leave room for potential additional seasons, it’s a well-oiled machine that fires on all cylinders to the very end.
