In 2023, Heist Shows Stole the TV Spotlight

In somewhat of an odd year for television, one genre remained a consistent force through it all: heist shows. Just as 2023 began with the release of Netflix's inventive anthology Kaleidoscope on January 1, the year closes with the long-awaited premiere of Berlin, a prequel to Spanish hit Money Heist, on December 29. The intervening months brought the arrival of several other shows about armed robberies — planned and accidental; successful and foiled — and the criminals behind them, and though some failed to leave a lasting impression, the best of these series blended crime drama conventions with a fresh perspective, whether via nonlinear storytelling, social commentary, or a surprising romantic element.

A quintessential New Year's release, Kaleidoscope got the year off to a fast start with its nonstop action and many twists. Eric Garcia's series rests on a familiar plot — master thief Leo Pap (Giancarlo Esposito) and his team plan to steal $7 billion in bearer bonds from a group of billionaires known as "The Triplets" — but its presentation is anything but traditional: Its eight episodes can be watched in any order (though Netflix ensures the heist episode, "White," always comes last), creating a unique viewing experience for every user.

While some viewers begin 25 years in the past with Leo's origin story, others are plunged directly into the lead-up to the robbery as Leo recruits a team of weapons specialists (Paz Vega), smugglers (Peter Mark Kendall), explosives specialists (Rosaline Elbay), and safe crackers (Jai Courtney) to pull one over on the man who betrayed him, Roger Salas (Rufus Sewell), the CEO of a corporate security firm.

There's no denying that Kaleidoscope's nonlinear structure adds a layer of intrigue, as each episode functions as a puzzle piece in a larger story about greed and revenge. By and large, however, the gimmick proves unnecessary. The heist — which is loosely inspired by the near-destruction of 1.7 million bond and stock certificates during Hurricane Sandy — is interesting enough, and Esposito's performance as a man out for blood convincing enough, on their own that the semi-interactive aspect adds little to the stylish crime caper.

British drama The Gold, which premiered in February on BBC One and landed on Paramount+ in September, is less of a heist show than a what-comes-next show. The 1983 robbery of the Brink's-Mat warehouse plays out in the first 10 minutes of the premiere, and even then, it's accidental: Six thieves broke into the facility looking for €1 million in Spanish pesetas, only to stumble upon three tons of pure gold bullion valued at £26 million. From there, The Gold quite literally follows the money as it shifts between the men who fenced the bullion — including savvy career criminal Kenneth Noye (Jack Lowden) and gold dealer John Palmer (Tom Cullen) — and the police's attempt to catch them before the stolen funds slipped away for good.

Given how quickly The Gold moves on from the robbery, later episodes tend to drag (the six-episode season could easily have been condensed into four), but creator Neil Forsyth uses that extra time to humanize the characters, particularly chief investigator DCI Brian Boyce (Hugh Bonneville), who never met a monologue he didn't like. Season 1 also emphasizes the economic inequality of 1980s London and the extreme lengths the "have nots" are willing to go to ensure their survival in a world designed to keep them at the bottom of the food chain.

Forsyth is so effective at developing these themes that viewers may find themselves siding with the robbers, especially the charming Noye and social-climbing lawyer Edwyn Cooper (Dominic Cooper), who cleans the money and then invests his portion in real estate developments across South London. The finale ends with their conviction, but in the closing minutes, Boyce's team realizes this criminal enterprise only had half the gold, setting up another cat-and-mouse game that will unfold across the recently announced second season.

Like The Gold, Hulu's Culprits is just as concerned with the aftermath as the crime itself. Three years after an elite team successfully empties out an underground vault, a masked assassin (Ned Dennehy) begins killing off the crewmembers one by one. Determined to protect his new fiancé Jules (Kevin Vidal) and his children, David (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett), the "muscle" of the group, returns to the criminal underworld and sets out with his former colleagues in search of answers.

As Culprits slowly reveals the connection between the heist and the assassin's rampage, it hops between three timelines — "Before," when mastermind Dianne Harewood (Gemma Arterton) establishes and trains her team; "Then," during the robbery; and "Now," years later — but the bulk of the action takes place in the present day as David questions which of the crewmembers he can trust and wrestles with his dark past.

While the far-reaching consequences of the crime drive the show, creator J Blakeson (who also wrote and directed several episodes) infuses the plot with commentary about the corrupt nature of a system that allows certain people to commit crimes, and nicks others for the most minor of infractions. The system isn't designed to protect someone like David, a queer, Black man who faces discrimination from local police and council members in his small town; it's meant to shield wealthy white men, including local developer Kyle Bedrosian (Morgan Kelly) and automotive billionaire Vincent Hawkes (Eddie Izzard), from accountability. The idea that this is a zero-sum game — that protecting the powerful comes at the expense of the little guy — is one of Culprits' most urgent messages, and it makes the final reveal of why Dianne targeted this particular vault hit that much harder.

Of the many heist-adjacent titles released in 2023 — a list that also includes Showtime film Heist 88 and Netflix's Who Is Erin Carter?, which centers on a woman who got away clean after crossing paths with armed robbers — Berlin deviates most from the traditional crime drama format. The Money Heist prequel is as much about the theft of €44 million in jewelry from a Parisian auction house as it is Berlin's (Pedro Alonso) romance with Camille (Samantha Siqueiros), the wife of his mark Polignac (Julien Paschal), and his unwavering belief in the transformative power of love. Berlin is so infatuated with Camille that he fails to recognize that their relationship is threatening the job, leading to tension with the crew, who continue to toil away in preparation as their boss galivants around Paris with his new love. (At one point, Alonso's character even does a post-coital celebratory dance, à la Joseph Gordon-Levitt in 500 Days of Summer.)

Berlin also adopts the comedic tone of Ocean's Eleven as this group of amateurs — whom Berlin selects because they are "so wonderfully malleable" and work from a place of "excitement" — wisecrack their way through the heist and the smaller jobs leading up to it. Over the course of the season, these aspiring criminals (played by Michelle Jenner, Begoña Vargas, Julio Peña, and Joel Sánchez) end up in romantic entanglements of their own, giving the Spanish series a sexy edge that cuts through Berlin and right-hand Damián's (Tristán Ulloa) more sentimental pronouncements on love and romance.

Despite their obvious differences, the year's best heist shows are united by a commitment to offering something new, while still honoring the essential elements of the genre: the flashy crew introduction sequences, the detailed explanations of how they'll pull off the theft, the sense that the walls could close in at any moment. There will always be something appealing about these kinds of stories, but as global inequity worsens, it becomes even more satisfying to watch ragtag crews level the playing field against the rich and powerful. And if those stories are packaged in unique ways or complicate our prevailing notion of "good guys" and "bad guys," they have the potential to live on long after the vault door swings shut.

Claire Spellberg Lustig is the Senior Editor at Primetimer and a scholar of The View. Follow her on Twitter at @c_spellberg.