Steal – The Only Crime Show Where the Real Villain Has a Pension Plan
There are two types of crime dramas.
The first type involves handsome detectives, tasteful jazz music, and crimes so gentle they might as well be parking violations.
The second type involves shouting, broken noses, and men named Gaz doing something extremely illegal with a van.
Steal proudly belongs to the second category.
And thank God for that.
From the opening scene, it doesn’t ease you in.
There’s no soft introduction. No “previously on” nonsense.
It simply grabs you by the throat and hurls you into a world where everyone is tired, slightly sweaty, morally questionable, and permanently five minutes away from catastrophe.
It’s less Ocean’s Eleven and more Ocean’s Eleven if everyone owed money to a bloke called Big Tony who keeps ferrets.
The crew at the centre of it all aren’t masterminds.
They’re not suave.
They don’t own turtlenecks.
These are the sort of people who plan a heist using a half-charged phone and a kebab receipt.
And that’s precisely why it works.
Because every plan feels like it could collapse at any moment — usually because someone forgot something crucial. Like the keys. Or the car. Or basic common sense.
You don’t watch thinking, “How clever.”
You watch thinking, “This is going to go spectacularly wrong.”
And it does.
Repeatedly.
Gloriously.
Then comes the real crime…
Just when you think it’s another gritty smash-and-grab thriller, Steal does something far darker.
It introduces money men.
Accountants.
Pension funds.
And suddenly the blokes with crowbars look like amateurs.
Because here’s the thing the show nails perfectly:
Robbing a shop gets you five years in prison.
Robbing a pension fund gets you a bonus and a company car.
There’s a plotline about financial manipulation so brutally realistic it makes the armed robberies look like children stealing pick ’n’ mix.
At least when someone steals your wallet, you know it’s gone.
But a pension?
That just evaporates.
One day you’re planning retirement in the sun.
Next day Dave in a suit says “market correction” and now you’re 78 working part-time stacking beans.
Legally.
It’s the most British form of horror imaginable.
No guns.
No masks.
Just spreadsheets.
And somehow that’s more terrifying.
Watching the petty criminals risk their lives for twenty grand while some bloke in an office loses three million before lunch is comedy so dark it practically absorbs light.
You laugh.
Then you check your bank app.
Then you stop laughing.
Style? Gritty. Fast. No nonsense.
There’s no pretentious camera work.
No moody shots of rain sliding down windows while someone whispers about their childhood trauma.
Everything moves.
Fast.
Arguments feel real. Mistakes feel real. Consequences feel horribly, uncomfortably real.
When things go wrong — and they always do — it’s messy, chaotic, and deeply human.
Which makes it ten times better than the glossy nonsense most crime shows churn out.
It smells of petrol, sweat, and bad decisions.
As it should.
Verdict
Steal is sharp, savage, funny in all the wrong ways, and just believable enough to make you mildly paranoid about your savings.
It’s not about clever criminals.
It’s about desperate ones.
And in the background, quietly nicking everyone’s future, are the real professionals with suits and pension schemes.
Which might be the bleakest joke of all.
Four and a half stars.
Would absolutely watch again.
Assuming my retirement fund hasn’t been stolen by episode two.
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