A modern British heist drama boasting smart, sexy criminals running from their past is a fabulous recipe for a night in. Or perhaps you prefer the Italian TV writer Montessori and his amateur sleuthing … From London to Oslo, Oregon to Helsinki, the sleuths, con artists, delinquents and hacking masterminds in SBS On Demand’s heists, cons and capers collection promise to entertain.
Here are some of the highlights.
Culprits
Culprits is a dark, daring and dangerous British heist thriller. With some stars sprinkled into the cast, this is a series that may attract viewers to check out Gemma Arterton or Eddie Izzard's latest work, but a much broader audience will be enticed by the layered dramas encompassing family, secrets, deadly assassinations and politics. The wonderfully glamorous Arterton is having a ball in her role as the villainous Dianne Harewood, head of a criminal gang that she has tasked with cracking a vault to steal £30 million. The catch? The crims must commit this major crime, then vanish - along with all trace of their past lives. Alas, things are never so simple. Skeletons begin to fall out of the closet for each of the gang and the past they'd wished to erase refuses to stay secret.
Culprits is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Culprits
series • action
MA15+
series • action
MA15+
Monterossi
If Culprits is all glamour, gloss and high-speed thrills, then Italian series Monterossi is a comparatively less boisterous affair. Carlo Monterossi (Gabrizio Bentivoglio) is the creator of “Crazy Love", a tabloid TV series that he comes to loath. The series, to his chagrin, is a huge hit though, and his agent and the producers are determined to keep Monterossi from making an exit. When Monterossi is confronted by a masked gunman and narrowly escapes with his life, he turns his attention to amateur sleuthing in an effort to discover who is out to murder him. Along for the ride are some of the TV series' staff (Martina Sammarco, Luca Nucera), and a series of extraordinary, unlikely characters who may be friend or foe. Montessori is the old, Italian uncle you wish you had: a snappily dressed, slyly funny man with little time for anything as traditional as rules.
Monterossi is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Monterossi
series • crime • Italian
MA15+
series • crime • Italian
MA15+
Bonnie & Clyde
If Montessori is a little too tame for your tastes, then Dutch series Bonnie & Clyde might be the dynamite duo to keep you on the edge of your seat. Young couple Esra Kaplan (Dilan Yurdakul) and Greg Driessen (Yannick Jozefzoon) unwittingly earn the title of "Bonnie and Clyde of the Low Countries" after a spate of violent crimes. Based on true events that made the headlines in 2014, Bonnie & Clyde journeys with Esra as she flees from the final months of her stint in juvenile detention to make a reckless escape with her boyfriend, Greg. Both are fleeing troubled, traumatic childhoods and yet, as their crimes accumulate, their dream of freedom becomes mired in bloody self-sabotage. It is a love story as much as it is a crime drama, and the sexy stars, their fashion and the gritty urban landscapes – saturated in grim, washed-out hues of pink and yellow – are devastatingly beautiful to behold. It looks like a Dutch Trainspotting.
Bonnie & Clyde is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
Devils (*)
Big money, big problems. Devils has that much in common with Recoil. Sleek poster-boy for stockbroker success Massimo Ruggero (Alessandro Borghi) treats the trading floor of his financial firm like a theatre stage. You want sales? Here's two hundred and fifty million, voila! But Ruggero's swift trajectory to the top is stymied by his mentor, the bank’s CEO Dominic Morgan (Patrick Dempsey). More than money lies on the line in Devils. Ruggero's ex-wife is a high-earning escort, which is a priceless trump card for Ruggero's major rival for promotion. There's also a team of skilled hackers out to prove major financial corruption, which threatens not only Ruggero, but many of the top-earning stockbrokers opportunistically benefiting from crashing global economies. Despite being drenched in greed, the glamorous and grasping Ruggero and Morgan are captivating as they face either death or destruction. Will either of them escape the gilded cages they've constructed, and who someone need to die for the money to keep rolling in?
*Be quick! Devils is streaming for a limited time at SBS On Demand.
Stop Nyqvist
The only devilish thing about Finnish spy series Stop Nyqvist is its darkly comedic heart. An intern at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Aleksis Nyqvist (Antti Tuomas Heikkinen) is a remarkably unprepared recruit to head the freshly founded secret service. His remarkable ability to set chaos into motion on an almost daily basis is both cringeworthy and uproarious. Under Nyqvist's amateur leadership, the civilians of Helsinki would be justified in wondering whether their secret service is better suited to performing in a Monty Python movie. Stop Nyqvist revels in the absurdities of bureaucracy and the true-life dysfunctionality of politics, diplomacy and defence.
Stop Nyqvist is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
Stream free On Demand
Stop Nyqvist
series • comedy • Finnish
MA15+
series • comedy • Finnish
MA15+
Wolf
In a similar vein to Guilt, British thriller Wolf is a gothic, grizzly mystery that ripples with a droll, campy humour. Based on Birdman author Mo Hayder's Jack Caffery novels, the protagonist – DI Jack Caffrey – is portrayed in all his wily weirdness by Ukweli Roach. Caffery is tasked with solving grisly crimes involving children. Is it his job that has fuelled Caffery's belief that his neighbour Ivan (Anthony Webster) murdered Caffrey's 10-year-old brother decades earlier? That past crime and Caffrey's present investigations coexist, along with Caffrey's own past childhood traumas and surreal present web of whodunnits. As dark as it sounds, there's an absurdity to the characters and the incredible events that befall them on a second-by-second basis. Can death and violence be hilarious? In Mo Hayder's wonderfully wicked world, you'll believe it.
Wolf is streaming now at SBS On Demand.
Dive into more long cons, mysteries and wild times in the at SBS On Demand.
