See more Daily Mail on Google - save us as a Preferred SourceBy CHRISTOPHER STEVENS, TV CRITIC Published: 23:59 BST, 15 July 2026 | Updated: 01:17 BST, 16 July 2026
Lucky (Apple TV)Rating: Four out of five stars Originality can be overrated. Sometimes all we demand of escapism is a series of familiar set–ups, quirks and thrills, strung together at breakneck pace.Lucky, a thriller about a con artist on the run from the FBI and the Mob, delivers exactly that. From the opening sequence, where our heroine Anya Taylor–Joy hurtles through a maze of parked lorries, scrambling over and under them as bullets fly, it's non–stop breathless pursuit.Every scene, almost every shot, looks like it has been pinched from a classic movie or TV show. Some I can place, such as the collage of images with Lucky and her husband Cary (Drew Starkey) in a Las Vegas gaming room, which could be slotted seamlessly into the Robert De Niro gangster flick Casino.They end up on the roof of the pleasure palace at 3am, gazing out at the neon landscape and dancing to Roy Orbison on the soundtrack. It's a dreamily surreal sequence that echoes the romantic interlude in Batman, Spiderman and every other superhero story.During a tense ride through the Nevada desert, with Lucky trapped in a car between two gangland executioners, the camera stops to pick out a tortoise under a cactus tree — an image made emblematic by Breaking Bad.Other visual cliches and identikit plot components are nagging away at me, though I can't quite place them. Lucky has a nervous habit of flicking her Zippo lighter — where have I seen that before?And when we first meet the Mob boss, coincidentally Lucky's mother–in–law (Annette Bening), she rolls down the tinted window of her chauffeured limo. It's a moment that pays homage to countless Mafia/heist/hitman pictures, simultaneously glamorous and threatening. Anya Taylor–Joy stars in Apple TV's Lucky. From the opening sequence Lucky is a non–stop breathless pursuit Every scene, almost every shot, of Lucky looks like it has been pinched from a classic movie or TV showTaylor–Joy has also been cast as a 'Lethal Elf' in the forthcoming Lord of the Rings sequel, which with her otherworldly looks must surely be the role she was born to play. Big Yin treatment of the night: Paramedics on Ambulance: Code Red (Ch5) were using something called the GCS or Glasgow Coma Scale to assess a patient's verbal slurring, balance and wooziness. It sounds like something Billy Connolly invented on a pub crawl. As Lucky, she is trying to escape the Mob in more ways than one. Her father (Timothy Olyphant) is in prison, searching for vicarious excitement by urging her to take wild risks.She and Cary steal $10 million in cash and, instead of fleeing the country immediately, opt for one last night of alcohol–fuelled partying in Sin City. When Lucky emerges from her hangover blackout, Cary and the cash have gone, and the FBI are in the lobby — led by Agent Rand (Aunjanue Ellis–Taylor), a woman whose rearing quiff of blond hair looks like her head is on fire.In short, if you tip all your favourite Elmore Leonard and Quentin Tarantino blockbusters into a blender, add a dozen episodes of The Sopranos, liberally season with Ocean's Eleven and its spin–offs, and take the whole lot on a rollercoaster, you'll have something very like Lucky.And that's not a bad thing. It wins no prizes for novelty but then, rollercoasters were not designed to be ridden only once.
