Steal

Rated TV-MA • Prime Video

The British crime thriller Steal tells the story of an office worker caught up in an inscrutable heist that leads to a national scandal.

The series comprises six episodes, with the entire first episode devoted to the actual robbery. Armed gunmen storm a wealth management firm taking the staff hostage. They force two low-level workers, Zara (Sophie Turner) and her friend Luke (Archie Madekwe), to transfer four billion pounds into offshore accounts. The thieves disappear as quickly as they arrived.

The theft sends shock waves across the country because the money was taken from a government pension fund, threatening the livelihood of retirees across Britain. Why was so much money being held in cash accounts? How did the thieves know it would be there? It’s clear to Detective Chief Inspector Rhys (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) the heist was an inside job, but why does MI5 seem to be hampering his investigation?

After the nail-biting first episode, Steal becomes a slow-burn mystery that ratchets up the tension as Zara and Rhys attempt to figure out who’s behind the theft.

Steal is a good example of modern British crime drama. It offers a gritty realism and a relatively quiet mood that revels in Zara and Rhys’ melancholy. They’re flawed heroes—she tends toward self-destructive decisions because she hates her dead-end job, and he’s got a gambling problem. There’s violence, but it’s more restrained than what’s typical for American shows. The series also contains some objectionable language, though again, not as much as one would expect from a TV-MA show made in America.

Perhaps the most British aspect of the series is the social commentary. Steal decries the classism that still pervades British society, but it also exhibits some ennui, questioning the virtue of tearing down social structures in pursuit of a more equitable economic framework.