Lucky: Anya Taylor-Joy is undeniably cool in this explosive tale of cons, revenge and ass-kicking

Leapfrogging the roofs of lorries, slipping in and out of different personae to evade capture, The Queen’s Gambit star is audacious in this reluctant last stand drama

This is a story about a girl named Lucky. Early morning, she wakes up – knock, knock, knock, on the door. It’s the FBI, and they’re pursuing her across the country because she’s stolen $10m. Don’t make the mistake I did, imagining this new Apple TV thriller (from Wednesday), starring Anya Taylor-Joy, to be a dramatisation of the song Lucky by Britney Spears. I’ve tried to find a connection between the two and, as you can see, it’s a stretch.

The seven-part show falls into the “one last heist” genre – but intriguingly, starts the morning after it. Our antiheroine stands on the roof of a Las Vegas casino hotel, having successfully stolen millions, toasting to a new, legitimate life. Within hours, Lucky appears to have been betrayed by the man she loves. She’s forced to run, penniless, from both the authorities and the murderous enforcers of a crime boss – who are collecting on a different debt incurred by her career criminal father. I guess what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay there.

The last point is a smart choice. Crime capers of the Ocean’s Eleven variety, motivated by personal gain, risk reading as smug and meaningless. Reluctant last stands, exemplified by the Clint Eastwood movie Unforgiven, have far more depth. Forced by circumstances beyond their control, a reformed bad guy is back in the saddle, relying on the arsenal they have renounced. We enjoy their badassery for a greater good, purchased by the guilt that plagues them.

Trying to go straight, Lucky can’t outrun the sins of her father, smooth-talking conman John Armstrong, who made her the criminal she is. John is always in Lucky’s head, dealing advice on which high-value items to pinch, how to evade the feds and manipulate people. “Read the room. Trust no one. And no shortcuts.” His fatherly advice sees her through life-or-death situations. But he’s also the cause of them, the chain to a life she wants to leave behind.

How much of her life is Lucky responsible for? Her predicament is “a series of bad decisions over an extended period of time”, she astutely notes to her mother-in-law – who is also not a great role model, let’s say. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga proved Taylor-Joy has the intensity to lead an action thriller, but I am more reminded of The Queen’s Gambit, in which her wounded chess prodigy uses and discards anyone to hand. Taylor-Joy seems to relish characters who resist being merely pliable, or coasting by on prettiness.

Lucky literally steals from children, sets people on fire a lot, lies as easily as breathing. She plays the female victim card with bracing cynicism, and sells out women who believe her. She’s also undeniably cool, leapfrogging the roofs of lorries, slipping in and out of different personae to evade capture or secure a room for the night. She’s skilled and audacious. If there’s one thing we like more than people being kind, it’s people being competent. Just because you’re not good, doesn’t mean you’re not great.

As if to double down on the moral ambiguity, we get Timothy Olyphant as Lucky’s imprisoned Dilf. Olyphant can’t help but be charismatic, especially now he’s letting his hair silver, and resembles an arctic fox. I also find his name an improbable delight. He sounds like a Disney character. What exactly is his relationship to being an elephant? Did he marry in, or was he born that way?

Lucky is at a disadvantage when it comes to lying low. She’s played by an actor with a face so striking people in adjacent zip codes are surely staring at it. It makes no difference how much Lucky glances down, hiding behind her hair, which she has also dyed a conspicuous, peroxide blond. She may as well wear a Michael Jackson face mask.

But plausibility isn’t the point; excitement is. The show delivers cat-and-mouse thrills, improvised weaponry, explosive set-pieces and a Fiona Apple theme song: a brooding, Bond-esque banger, in which she yowls about being “born in the horns of a bull” and becoming a toreador. This walking nature v nurture experiment wants to leave her criminality in the past. I want her to keep running, exacting revenge and kicking asses like someone’s keeping score. Sadly for her, I suspect only one of us will be in luck.