(Mini Series) Lucky - A Solid Enough Series About the Struggle of Grifter Adapted from Best Selling Novel

I have heard about this mini series released on AppleTV+ since mid of last month which intrigued me. But as it was only made available once a week, as usual I would wait till its completion before started watching. However I did not realize that its final episode was released on 19 August until two days ago while browsing for new series. So I began watching then and just finished last night. Without further ado, here's more on the series.

Brief Story Line

Lucky (Anya Taylor-Joy - The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga etc) and her husband Cary (Drew Starkey - Outer Banks TV series, Queer etc) had just finished the task given by her father, the con-artist John Armstrong (Timothy Olyphant - Over Your Dead Body, Havoc etc) who was imprisoned for embezzling fund. Unfortunately something went terribly wrong and she became the target of crime boss Priscilla Masterson (Annette Bening - American Beauty, Being Julia etc) & her right hand man Dusty (Clifton Collins Jr. - The Bricklayer, Jockey etc) and the FBI led by Agent Billie Rand (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor - Quantico TV series, King Richard etc) who wanted to capture her.

Using her experience of following her father's footsteps, Lucky went on the run while trying to find ways to save herself and her father.

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this series.

End of Brief Story Line

From the moment I watched the first episode, I already had a feeling of what was going to happen, so I was not that surprised after what was supposed to be a shocking thing. Anyway, what came after that was a rather intense game of cat and mouse where Lucky had to use her intelligence and quick thinking to escape from the chase by not one but two parties. And through out the first half of the series, it was very interesting watching her doing what she did best, especially when she managed to convince people to help her.

Once I got to the middle of the series, I was surprised of how the story developed. Things escalated after that fourth episode which finally culminated to the final 2 episodes and a very interesting finale. The series only had 7 episodes with a surprising twist before the end and a nice enough conclusion. From what I saw in the opening credits, the series was based on the novel of same title written by Marissa Stapley. However when I tried to find out more on the book, I found that the story seemed to deviate quite a lot with the series, which apparently the writer did not mind, likely because they still reached the same conclusion.

I also noticed in the credits that Anya Taylor-joy was one of the producers along with Reese Witherspoon. The series itself was created by Jonathan Tropper (creator of Banshee TV series and writer of The Wrecking Crew etc) and he served as showrunners together with TV writer Cassie Pappas. Aside from the above cast who did excellent, particularly Anya Taylor-Joy who was awesome here, there were also appearances of Mo McRae (Almost Family TV series, Aftermath etc) as Billi's partner Agent Gates, Eric Lange (Brand New Cherry Flavor TV series, Antebellum etc) as their supervisor Kershaw, the very familiar face of William Fichtner (Hypnotic, The Company You Keep TV series etc) as Priscilla's boss Wayne Whittaker and several guest stars like Alanna Ubach (Venom: The Last Dance, Ted TV series etc) as Sylvia in episode 2 and few others.

Btw the series did not have long episodes. It has duration between 39-48 minutes which should make it easy to binge in one full day if you are committed enough. From what I read, critics were impressed by Anya Taylor-Joy's performance which I quite agreed, though it did not have an extraordinary rating. Meanwhile audience seemed to be more receptive, even thinking of possible renewal. In this case, I did not have the same opinion as I liked the way it ended without complicating with further story.

Overall this was a solid limited series about an intelligent grifter who faced the dilemma of having to choose what was best for her while trying to save her life and the people she loved. There were some nice grifting and few pretty intense cat and mouse game, plus some suspenseful car chase scenes as well, combined with family drama that I enjoyed. So if you are looking for limited series with such attributes, I think you would be entertained by this. But if you want a full heist series or something with lots of action, then this might not be for you. The choice is yours.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3.75 out of 5 stars