Culprits review: A caper with class consciousness

We’ve seen how heist shows and films are handled: There’s a team, a job, a take, some twists, getaway vehicles, guns, and goons. The formula is useful, but what the creators ultimately do with that structure to tell a unique story is what makes it interesting. The British series Culprits comes with all the typical genre baggage we expect (including literal baggage, the cash-filled kind), but the eight-episode drama, which debuts December 8 on Hulu and Disney+, brings some fresh ideas to the format that make us think as well as thrill us.

Art stands out as an important element in Culprits and not just in the cinematic sense. As our hero David Marking (who assumes the new identity Joe Petrus following the heist) and queen thief Diane Harewood first establish their working relationship, they sit together on a bench in the Rothko exhibit at Tate Britain, framed and backgrounded by a wine red painting, its pinkish columns flanking the leads. It’s impossible to ignore how intentional this artsy backdrop seems to be. To further underscore its thematic importance, a character later waxes poetic about the Rothkos. He explains how when you see a Rothko in print somewhere, you feel like you get the idea, but face to face with one, the emotional weight of it becomes “brutal.”

It’s a bit like how you get the gist of what being a parent might be like, but don’t really know until you have kids, a reality David/Joe (played by a great Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) is confronted with when he settles down with a widower with two children of his own after he has fled Britain for the U.S. It’s like how you can intellectually understand how the great, big heist you’ve signed onto might go down according to The Plan, but you don’t fully know what you’ve gotten yourself into until you’re cracking safes and being shot at. Our protagonist gets to grapple with both of these realities, parenting realness and post-heist fallout, all over the course of this one season.

It’s interesting to view this show through the lens of labor, too. What is a team assembled to carry out a heist if not a type of temporary workforce? They’re seasonal employees, if you will, like the guy stocking shelves at Bath & Body Works during the holidays—exactly the same. This show forces us to consider the implications of how much (or how little) we’re allowed to know about our coworkers. When Harewood orchestrates The Plan, she assigns each team member a name based on their role in this operation; they are not to ever learn each other’s actual names. Once Driver turns up dead, however, and other teammates continue to be picked off one by one, it brings this policy into question, with survivors frantically digging through their possessions and scouring social media to summon secret means of contacting each other. They’ve collectively determined that they have to join forces if they are to protect themselves and their families from this mysterious threat.

However, even this seeming pro-union messaging of the show does have its limitations. As much as fellow employees can help each other, they can also leverage information against each other and, say, give up each other’s addresses and close contacts to an assassin, as in this show’s nightmare scenario. You can’t be sure which of your colleagues are down to organize with you and which are out to betray you. As Officer (played with zest by Kirby Howell-Baptiste) explains to the protagonist David/Joe, she likes him, but she’s not going to die for him. Collegiality is not enough. That risk-your-life kind of ferocious love, we learn, remains reserved for family, as much as workplaces may try to invoke familial language to coerce employee loyalty. The heist team is cordial once they band together, but it’s only when their closest people are hurt or threatened that we see them at their fullest and fiercest.

Back to the artsy element of this show for a moment. The overall palette makes frequent use of blues and reds, colors that convey significant political meanings on either side of the leftist/conservative dichotomy as well as labor movements in both Britain and the U.S. Joe/David’s partner Jules even frequently wears a sweater with the American flag knitted into it. And other bold colors pop up in this show, too: yellow, all-caps titles orient us as the series jumps around in time and place, tying in a third primary color. Pops of pinks, greens, and purples abound, and each one strikes us as significant at a gut level. (Color is powerful that way.)

Harewood herself, in her very first scene, rocks a high-contrast look evoking modernism, consisting of a white trench coat, a blunt, black bob, and bold, red lips. Her style choices dazzle throughout the series, from lip color to lapel, and it makes us want to throw on a snappy blazer and some smoky eye real bad. And the way that the lighting plays off of Joe/David’s skin, making him appear to be radiating color from within, adds emotional gravity to key scenes. The locations, too, span a variety of architectural styles and climates, from drizzly Washington state with its Craftsman houses to European ruins to eco homes to warehouses. There is a lot to take in visually, but it serves to anchor rather than overwhelm.

There is some overt anti-capitalist messaging toward the end of our adventure, which feels a little bit preachy and unnecessary following the experience we’ve all had watching these heist participants going after their higher-ups (and even some shitty Washington suburb rich dudes in a subplot) this whole entire time. We kind of get it by then, you know? And things definitely happen in this show that will make you go, “Huh? I’m not sure it works that way.” But all in all, it’s fast-paced and flashy, and it feels emotionally honest, at least in the characterization of the two romantic leads who form the heart of the story. Does it completely revolutionize the heist-show formula? Of course not. But there is enough style and substance for it to leave a strong impression.

Culprits premieres December 8 on Hulu and Disney+