'12 12 12' Review
Season One.
Aired On: Apple TV.
Release Date: 11/13/26.
Genre: Crime. Thriller.
The Verdict: A Must-See
The term “formula” is mostly used derogatorily when talking about movie and television plots. If something is beholden to the “formula,” it is often used as shorthand for embracing clichés and tropes, and to accuse the movie or show of being unoriginal. But in some genres, the “formula” is the key that drives the engine. You rarely have a rom-com without a third act falling out and a dramatic reconciliation. You don’t make a ghost story without unrelated jump scares in the first act, whether it’s from a cat, an annoying younger brother, or whatever. And you didn’t make an Eddie Murphy comedy in the mid-90s without him playing at least three different characters, often of different genders and races.
I’m guilty of using “formula” as a shorthand for uninspired, and have done it in my writing plenty of times. But these beats exist because, for decades, they’ve worked and are crucial to the rhythm of these stories and the overall entertainment value. What happens when you take the beats of the familiar, throw them in a blender, and mix them up into an unpredictable order? Does it make the same old story feel fresh, or is it unnecessary gimmickry? That is a question that the new Apple TV heist series 12 12 12 aims to answer. Here is a show that is both familiar, many times often very familiar in its plotting and character archetypes, and yet the presentation is practically the whole appeal.
Every episode starts the same. A screen, split three ways vertically, with three different scenes occupying each slot. Agent Jack Strickland (Anthony Mackie) with this narration, allegedly direct from an FBI manifesto:
“A high-asset robbery, professionally conceived, takes 12 months of planning and 12 months of execution. A bank robber who isn’t caught in 12 days…isn’t caught at all.”
Before each hour, 12 12 12 reemphasizes its rules. All episodes, each between 45 minutes and an hour, split their time between three different periods, with a high-stakes bank heist as the nucleus. Each episode spends time in the months leading up to the heist, right in the heart of the heist, and in the days after, as the authorities try to catch up with what happened. The order of presentation changes each time. In one episode, the present day goes first, and the past goes last. That order could be completely different in the next episode — or maybe it’s exactly the same. The needs and urgency in each part of the story drive the choice.
It’s a bold gambit by showrunners Jim Keeble and Dudi Appleton, probably best known for the Rob Lowe ITV drama Wild Bill. Heist movies and shows often build on the momentum leading up to the actual score. You meet the crew, spend some time with them, and with the cops or adversaries on the other side, if applicable. That straightforward timeline and hard deadline is money-in-the-bank suspense, so what happens when you intentionally cut out the suspense by showing the aftermath at the same time? To the credit of this show, it does often create a new type of enjoyment.
The structure of 12 12 12 is inventive, and it compensates for a story that doesn’t have nearly the same level of ambition. The nucleus event is a Christmas-time heist of a heavily secured, high-value vault in a Zurich bank. Plenty of challenges come up for mastermind Paul Galvin (Jamie Dornan) and his team in the year before the big night. Paul is your typical “thief with a heart of gold”: a criminal with a moral compass, a tortured backstory, and a pregnant wife he loves more than anything in the world (Agathe Rousselle, of Titane fame). Fresh off a big job back in the States, he is basically forced into this newest heist by a dangerous and unsavory criminal enterprise, the consequences of the bad behavior of his hotheaded brother Bobby (Jack Kesy). Take your pick of familiar constant/violent combos — De Niro and Kilmer in Heat, Affleck and Renner in The Town, Keitel and Madsen in Reservoir Dogs — they are all being evoked here.
Circling the job is the aforementioned Agent Strickland (Mackie). He has been hot on the trail of the Galvin brothers since the last job, when something very explosive and damaging to him happened. The insomnia and desperation stink on this character. The bags under his eyes and the booze on his breath should get their own character credit. It’s personal for Strickland, and a normally adjusted person, agent or not, wouldn’t uproot his life for a year to live in Switzerland. He’s even a pariah within the Swiss authorities, with only tough cop Lena (Sallie Harmsen) giving him any time of day.
Now, to be fair, I think that simplicity is necessary to make this work in the first place; otherwise, the flow would get really confusing. Though I wouldn’t call 12 12 12 the sharpest show in the world, or the most consistently engaging, it keeps your attention longer than it might if it were played straight. The best drama comes from the clues and questions proposed and answered in the three parts. We meet certain characters at the end of their stories, and slow-roll the rewind. We also see the heist happen, then learn how they came to certain key decisions.
Fittingly, both stars have been directed not to stray too far from the personas we expect from them. Mackie is a little more stone-faced than usual, but this is essentially a more haggard version of Sam Wilson. He knows how to sell the action well. Dornan is an actor I like most when he’s taking roles that are much more eccentric and weird than this, and he's admittedly a bit forgettable in the role (you can also feel the Irish accent trying to bust out at many points). The show makes up for this staleness by adding a lot of unusual figures to the rest of Galvin’s crew. German actor Julius Feldmeier plays the jointless acrobat, Hildegard Schroedter plays the unassuming, middle-aged bank attendant Galvin convinces to join their side, and Kali Reis (a real standout in True Detective: Night Country) is the getaway expert.
To answer the question I posed at the beginning, I believe 12 12 12 finds a new kind of viewer appeal, taking risks in its structure without sacrificing the tension and excitement that make these stories fun in the first place. It could’ve been even better if it took a few more risks at the core of its narrative, but that feels like an intentional decision. It won’t be very memorable beyond the easy-to-describe hook, but for popcorn streaming viewing, that’s a fine score.
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