'Lucky' Review: Strong Cast, Weak Chases on Apple TV+
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- 'Lucky' premieres Wednesday, July 15 with two episodes on Apple TV+, adapted from Marissa Stapley's 2021 novel by Jonathan Tropper, with new episodes releasing weekly through the August 19 finale.
- Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Lucky, a thief whose husband Cary (Drew Starkey) disappears with their $10 million Las Vegas heist, triggering a manhunt spanning casinos, downtown L.A., and a dingy gas station.
- Annette Bening plays Priscilla Matheson, the mafia matriarch and Lucky's mother-in-law whose pursuit adds a personal stake, while Timothy Olyphant co-stars as Lucky's imprisoned father John, still tied to his old boss Priscilla.
- Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor leads the FBI side as Agent Billie Rand, barking orders with 'supernatural instincts,' with Clifton Collins Jr. as the seedy Dutch and Alanna Ubach in a key second-episode guest role.
- The review calls the series 'a chase movie stretched to series length' and a 'deflating blunder' for opening with a flash-forward whose payoff 'couldn't matter less,' noting the premiere's pursuit is 'plagued by stops and starts to introduce characters.'
- The cast earns the strongest praise, with Taylor-Joy managing 'cool without being remote and vulnerable without being anyone's victim,' Bening relishing Priscilla's unconscionable choices, and Olyphant 'having a ball' as the bad dad who still loves his daughter.
Why it matters: Apple TV+ is staking another limited-series bet on a prestige-cinema headliner like Taylor-Joy, but the critic's verdict — serviceable thrills undermined by a script that keeps stopping to explain itself — suggests the platform's chase-thriller formula needs more than marquee casting to land.
