Lupin

The series also doesn’t waste a single minute, packing each and every moment full of suspense. Put all of that together, and it’s an early frontrunner to steal a spot as one of the best shows of the year.

Kay, an English writer who worked on the BBC America series Killing Eve, brings to Lupin some of his previous show’s impudent spirit, as well as a willingness to tweak its audience’s expectations.

The performances and the production — it has that particularly European quality of feeling natural even when it gets stylish — keep the series warm even as the plot is made up of Rube Goldberg contraptions that require everything to go right at just the right time and for human psychology to be 100% predictable.

The story bounces around in time, not only showing us Assane’s childhood before and after Babakar’s death, but revisiting aspects of each heist afterward to reveal exactly how he pulled it off. (In that respect, Leterrier’s experience directing the first Now You See Me film comes in very handy.) This kind of fractured narrative could easily get confusing, but the story itself has so much energy that it all flows together nicely.

Though the show’s have-vs-have-nots dynamics aren’t handled with great subtlety—the rich are mostly presented as condescending, ruthless, and self-interested cartoons, particularly Hubert—they provide a welcome measure of real-world conflict to Assane’s fantastical adventure.

Lupin’s twists and turns, and a fine performance from Omar Sy (who is also the show’s artistic director, helping to establish the series’ lavish look) makes the show eminently watchable.