In the new Apple TV series Lucky, the title character’s latest troubles begin with a situation straight out of The Hangover: On the roof of Caesars Palace, Lucky Armstrong (Anya Taylor-Joy) celebrates with her husband, Cary (Drew Starkey), after stealing millions from some very dangerous people. Lucky and Cary raise a champagne toast to their future, but Lucky doesn’t realize that her drink has been drugged. When she wakes up the next day, groggy and disoriented, both Cary and the money are gone, and she has to piece together what happened, all while being chased by both the FBI and the people she stole from.
That journey soon takes her away from Las Vegas, although Lucky sticks around the desert Southwest for a while, and the show becomes less distinctive when the setting later shifts to anonymous office buildings and hotel rooms. “I don’t know why anyone would choose to live in the desert,” says Priscilla (Annette Bening), the crime boss who’s pursuing Lucky to retrieve the stolen money for her own boss, an even more powerful kingpin. But this unique, arid locale is the right place for a lifelong grifter like Lucky, who fits in perfectly with the gamblers and outsiders, like the isolated, desert-dwelling family who briefly take her in.
Lucky cons that family by pretending to be the victim of domestic abuse, a tactic she uses multiple times on unsuspecting strangers. Taylor-Joy brings determination and empathy to her portrayal of Lucky, and she has a strong father-daughter dynamic with Timothy Olyphant as Lucky’s con-artist dad. Still, there’s not much below the surface of this solid but familiar crime drama, which begins strikingly in the glittering lights of Las Vegas before building to a generic final showdown. Maybe Lucky can head back where she belongs in the second season.
Lucky is currently streaming on Apple TV.
