I doubted Sophie Turner's Steal but its jaw-dropping twist in episode 1 had me hooked
Steal isn't like every other thriller on streaming
Steal seems like it’ll be like all the other heist thrillers you’ve ever seen. Yet, in its closing seconds, Sophie Turner’s new Amazon Prime Video series proves it has way more to offer.
The new series stars Turner as Zara, an everyday grunt in an investment bank who makes hundreds of thousands less than the traders in the same room.
One fateful day, a group of armed, highly trained thieves holds the entire office at gunpoint and threatens to kill them if they don’t do exactly as they say.
It’s not just a few million pounds, either: they want to take £4 billion straight out of the bank’s cash fund, bleeding thousands of clients’ pensions. However, if you think that’s shocking, episode 1 has another surprise.
***Warning: spoilers for Steal ahead***
Sophie Turner’s Steal starts with a huge plot twist that changes everything
Around midway through Steal episode 1, the gun-toting thieves force Zara and Luke (Archie Madekwe) to carry out a series of trades.
The process to steal £4 billion from pension funds is (thankfully, for all of us) a bit convoluted. Basically, multiple things have to happen, but Zara is the last person to ensure they get the money.
When it lands in their account, they flee the scene seconds before the police arrive.
Zara looks enormously relieved, but some things give her pause. For example, she questions why the firm would want her to sign an NDA after the day’s events.
When she meets DCI Rhys Kovac (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd), he tells her she’s a “significant witness”. That doesn’t make her a suspect: it just means she could be more valuable to the police, given all of her experience.
She gets a nosebleed, so Rhys lets her scoot off to the bathroom. She bumps into two colleagues and overhears them talking about a theory.
“Isn’t it obvious? They’re worried it’s an inside job,” one of them speculates. “Someone must have told them, how else could they do it?”
They say it’ll be easy to figure out who the “inside man” is, but the scene cuts to Zara quietly smiling. It was her!
Why you need to watch Steal on Amazon
From the outset, Steal looked like it’d fall victim to itself. An over-inflated TV show with a tired plot that should have been a movie (that’d still fall into the obscurity of the streaming platform’s library).
The reveal that Turner’s Zara is in on it ups the stakes massively, and it raises big questions for the rest of the series.
Is her best friend Luke involved, or is he none the wiser to Zara’s treachery against her own bank? How much of her panic was an act? How much money did she actually get; is it an even split of £4 billion?
The fact that I (and, hopefully, you) immediately thought of those questions bodes well for the rest of the show. In a world where there is so much to watch all the time, I didn’t blink before I pressed play on the next episode.
Does Steal maintain its momentum from the first episode? No, but even through the odd saggy stretch and Industry-lite writing, it sticks the landing.
For some people, Prime Video may be best known for shows like Fallout and The Boys. These are ultimately more niche; comic book and video game-based IPs that are massively popular but won’t always attract your average punter.
Steal (a bit like The Girlfriend) is a show anyone could like – all you need to do is watch that first episode.
Read more: The best films on Amazon Prime Video you should watch this month
