In Steal, Prime Video’s new heist thriller, Sophie Turner takes a turn. The Game of Thrones alum, who has till now primarily flirted (and successfully so) with sweeping period drama, imaginatively limitless dystopian saga and the deep, dark world of sci-fi on screens both big and small, wades into new territory with Steal.

Except that nothing in Steal is quite normal. Apart from the beginning. The six-episode series opens on a day like any other in the bustling, skyscraper-dominated financial district of London, known to locals as “the city”. Busy-looking, sprightly workers, coffee in hand, stream into shiny glass towers. That includes Zara Dunne (Turner) and Luke Selborn (Archie Madekwe), both working as trade processors in the operations team of Lochmill Capital, a fiduciary fund responsible for investing the pensions of blue-collar workers.

Zara and Luke — referred to during the course of the show as “work wives” — are also good pals, stumbling into work terribly hungover after a night of a no-holds-barred pub crawl. A few frames later, they realise that the wobbles are easier to deal with than what greets them.

A group of armed, black-clad gunmen storm onto the floor, demanding the transfer of £4 billion to an off-shore account. The men (and a woman) mean business, holding the swish workforce of Lochmill Capital hostage. It is a taut, pressure-cooker-like situation and it is upto Zara and Luke to put through the transaction.

Steal kicks off well and that is half the battle won. What it does better is upend — at least in the first few episodes — the stereotypes that weigh down a heist thriller. Instead of employing the predictable trope of separating the good guys from the bad, Steal operates in the grey.

Very early on, we know (mild spoiler) that both Zara and Luke are involved in what they didn’t know was the plan for a full-blown heist. With their lives — and a few million — on the line and with one of them getting kidnapped pretty early in the story, it is up to the other (no prizes for guessing who) to beat the thieves and the investigators, the latter including both cops (led by the rather charming DCI Rhys Covaci, played by Jacob Fortune-Lloyd) and the far more ruthless MI5.

Sophie Turner agrees that Steal — even though, in our opinion, it slips up in the middle — is not your regular heist thriller. A few weeks ago, t2 found itself sitting across a screen featuring Turner and Madekwe as they engaged in a virtual conversation with us on their latest outing. When t2 asked Turner the primary reasons that made her want to be a part of the series, the X-Men star who will next play Lara Croft, said: “It is so different because normally, in a heist thriller, you know who the bad guys are, you know who the good guys are, you know who is doing someone over.... (But) in this one, you don’t know who the antagonists are, who the protagonists are. It is all very grey, and it is a constant guessing game, which I really loved.”

Archie Madekwe, who, in a relatively short career, has built a solid filmography comprising films like Midsommar, Gran Turismo and Saltburn, echoed his co-star. “Episode One broke the mould (of a heist thriller), and reading that the first time around felt so exciting and compelling. I thought: ‘Oh, I thought I had this all figured out!’ I knew what the script was going to be, and then I saw that I didn’t! That, hopefully, is how the audience feels when watching it. It feels like something that you are constantly guessing, constantly trying to keep up with. That was definitely the experience of reading the script and being in it... that is something that really drew me to it,” Madekwe told t2. In a recent development, the 30-year-old British actor has been named a nominee for the prestigious 2026 EE BAFTA Rising Star Award, scheduled to be held in London on February 22.

LONDON EYE

It was the opportunity to shoot on home turf London — that almost assumes the importance of a character in Steal — that appealed to both Turner and Madekwe. “I have only done period pieces or sci-fi pieces... never anything really modern or set in London in the present time. It was actually very foreign to me, but in a really comforting, cosy way, because it was at home and it was so fascinating,” Turner told t2. “It also feels so much more devastating because these are places you know and love, but watching the first episode and seeing all those guys (the thieves) and their prosthetics on in the Tube (London Underground).... So every time I get on the Tube now, I am looking at everyone!”

Steal, for Madekwe, was “incredibly modern and very current”. “Steal felt really grounded in a world that I knew and recognised. It was shot in London where I grew up — the areas that I know, streets that I know, restaurants that I have been to… it just felt so familiar. And the familiarity of it lends itself to a familiarity of performance in space and environment and when things start to go wrong, it feels a lot closer to reality.”

HIGHS & LOWS

Steal’s cat-and-mouse format includes a large number of players, with Zara at the front and centre. Though the series loses steam midway and falls prey to cliche, contrivance and convenience, it is Turner’s turn that helps Steal pull through. The actor is magnetic as a woman on the run, operating in a world in which she is both player and the one being played, until it becomes almost impossible to distinguish between the two. Steal is definitely a fitting showcase for the actor who made Game of Thrones’s Sansa Stark iconic.

As it powers on in episodes that are each roughly of 40-45 minutes length, Steal’s pacy vibe works in its favour, though its overcomplicated narrative does feel tedious in parts. What works for Steal is its final revelation, which, however, may leave a few viewers feeling shortchanged.

Steal may not redefine the genre, but it does take some interesting swings. While all of them may not land, it does well in raising pertinent questions about hierarchy, impunity and the distribution of risk.

We rounded off our chat with Turner and Madekwe by asking what they — in keeping with the theme of Steal — would like to ‘steal’ from each other. The quick-as-a-whip answer from Turner to Madekwe: “Oh, I just want to be you! You have great friendship groups. I am taking your friends. I am adding your friends to mine!” Madekwe’s reply: “We will just share!”

That’s a steal, all right.

Priyanka Roy with inputs from Subhalakshmi Dey
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