Anya Taylor-Joy spends much of the new Apple TV series “Lucky” with blood on her clothes, body, and hair, some of it hers, some of it from the unfortunate people she happens to encounter. She’s just a thief, not a killer, but chaos follows her wherever she goes, which will happen when you steal $10 million from gangsters and the FBI is on your trail like a famished bloodhound
Taylor-Joy, who made her big TV splash as an unlikely chess prodigy in the first-rate 2020 Netflix series “The Queen’s Gambit,” is a restless, gamine force in “Lucky,” which starts slowly, withholding information for a couple of episodes, before picking up steam and clicking together nicely. It’s a story about cops and robbers, but the more important action revolves around frayed bonds and regrets between parents and children — fathers and daughters, mothers and sons — and how they lead to a messy and, yes, bloody situation.
Things start off well enough for Luciana “Lucky” Armstrong (Taylor-Joy). She’s celebrating in Las Vegas with her husband, Cary (Drew Starkey), and why not? In their hotel room sits a bag packed with that $10 million. But such sums rarely come trouble-free (Mo money, mo problems, as the Notorious B.I.G. once explained in song). The cash was originally stolen by Lucky’s thieving dad, John (Timothy Olyphant), from Cary’s gangster mom, Priscilla (Annette Bening). Priscilla is not someone you want to steal from. Then Cary disappears with the money, leaving Lucky drugged in their hotel room and in a bit of a mood, and the seven-episode chase through Southern California and the Southwest is on.
Let us pause for a moment to observe that Bening’s crime-boss turn is reason enough to watch “Lucky.” It’s been 36 years since she earned her first (of five) Oscar nomination for playing a manipulative conwoman in “The Grifters,” but Priscilla brings to mind another character from that movie, the loving but toxic and tragically damaged mother played by Anjelica Huston. Priscilla is hardened to life’s niceties. She looks very sharp in a turtleneck, and she acts like someone who would hate to break a nail as she watched you take your last breath. She also loves her son, which is one reason why she hates the woman who married him, Lucky.
That mother/son relationship finds a more developed parallel in the bond between John and Lucky. John, a thief since childhood, raised his girl to be the same. He trained her well. It’s fun to watch Taylor-Joy make her way through Lucky’s series of lies and scams; on the run at one point, she talks her way into a tony L.A. children’s birthday party, where she makes off with an expensive dress, several pocketbooks, and gift envelopes of cash. As we see in one of several well-conceived flashbacks, her dad taught her this scam, and many others. She’s getting tired of the criminal grind, but she’s been trained well. And now she’s desperate. There’s one more parental relationship in “Lucky,” between a workaholic FBI agent (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, excellent as always in a bottle-blond ‘do) and her teen daughter (Aadyn Encalarde), who wishes mom would chill out a little. Or at least try an edible.
You may have noticed by now that the principal characters in this crime yarn are women. Based on a novel by Marissa Stapley and created by Jonathan Tropper (“Your Friends and Neighbors”), “Lucky” has an emotional intelligence and a basis in family dynamics that gives ballast to the car chases (there are several, some better than others) and gunplay (not as much as you might think, despite the blood that Lucky seems to wear as an accessory). Taylor-Joy, Bening, and Ellis-Taylor take turns at the heart of the story, even though, as the title indicates, this is Lucky’s show. Olyphant, a sly silver fox; William Fichtner, as Priscilla’s scary, reclusive boss; and Clifton Collins Jr., as Priscilla’s loyal henchman, all lend strong support, but the female characters are first in “Lucky.”
The series also represents what will hopefully become an Apple TV trend. The streamer is as consistent as any other, but with many series stretching up to ten hours in running time, you can often feel the narrative padding. “Lucky” checks in at a crisp seven episodes. It’s a lean, fast ride that still offers plenty of opportunity to stop and appreciate the human moments wedged in between the thrills. Quantity is rarely the same as quality in episodic television, and “Lucky,” to its credit, steers clear of the bloat epidemic that plagues so much current TV. That’s a big reason why it’s such a bloody good time.
Starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Timothy Olyphant, Annette Bening, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, William Fichtner, Drew Starkey, Clifton Collins Jr., Mo McRae, and Aadyn Encalarde. First two episodes premiere Wed., July 15 on Apple TV; subsequent episodes stream Wednesdays through Aug. 19
Chris Vognar can be reached at chris.vognar@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram at @chrisvognar and on Bluesky at chrisvognar.bsky.social
