Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | TV | January 22, 2026
I love a pleasant surprise, and Prime Video’s new Sophie Turner series, Steal, qualifies. It opens inside a financial firm where Turner’s Zara Dunne works as a low-paid data processor. A group of armed intruders storms the office and demands that $4 billion — much of it belonging to pensioners — be transferred into an offshore account. Zara and her colleague and friend, Luke (Archie Madekwe), are forced to execute the transactions themselves. Shaking, crying, and terrified, they push the money through, and just when it looks like the show might settle into a six-episode hostage standoff, the transfer clears, and the criminals vanish before the authorities arrive.
It’s not exactly shocking that Zara and Luke turn out to be the “men on the inside.” The thieves wire them $5 million in crypto as payment, but Luke immediately panics, nearly exposes the operation, and is promptly abducted to keep him quiet. The more interesting turn is that Zara’s role in the heist is not quite what it seems. Much of the series follows her as she dodges police custody and launches her own investigation into the people behind the robbery, eventually teaming up with DCI Rhys Covac (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd).
Covac is drowning in gambling debt but otherwise appears to be a straight cop, genuinely trying to crack the case. Of course, this being a British crime series, there’s always a larger conspiracy lurking in the background. Covac and Zara repeatedly find their investigation obstructed by MI5, raising the obvious question: Why would MI5 want to stop the police from solving a $4 billion heist?
That mystery sits at the heart of Steal, alongside the question of who is really pulling the strings and what the true motive behind the robbery might be. The show peels back its layers over six episodes, building toward a twist I genuinely did not see coming.
I went in expecting something lighter, along the lines of Prime Video’s slick but hollow spy fare like Citadel. While Steal is undeniably slick, it has far more in common with a classic British crime thriller: conspiratorial, tightly plotted, and bolstered by a strong supporting cast. It’s also genuinely entertaining. The show isn’t especially dense or demanding, but the end-of-episode turns are effective enough to keep you hooked. It may also be the most dynamic performance I’ve seen from Sophie Turner, who gets to be something other than sullen or stoic and distinctly British.
Steal isn’t going to redefine television or linger in the cultural memory for long, but it’s a brisk, occasionally gripping ride and a surprisingly pointed indictment of capitalism, provided you can look past the irony of streaming it on Jeff Bezos’s platform.
‘Steal’ is currently streaming on Prime Video.
