# Dope Thief review – this crime caper’s hilarious moments are like Brooklyn Nine-Nine meets Breaking Bad

Apple TV+’s mesmerising, funny tale of low-level criminals stealing drugs while posing as DEA agents is fast, furious – and stars Brian Tyree Henry on heartbreakingly wonderful form.

## Introduction

Contrary to popular belief, a man’s reach should ideally not exceed his grasp. All hell tends to break loose if it does. Never more so, it turns out, than if a pair of low-level criminals find a semi-lucrative groove posing as DEA agents to fake-bust other small-time drug dealers and relieve them of their cash without real police ever getting involved.

Such is the hustle of Ray Driscoll (Atlanta’s ) and Manny Carvalho (Narcos’ Wagner Moura): best friends since they met as young men in prison, addicts at different stages of recovery, and now partners in crime moving through the minor crack dens of Philadelphia. The opening set piece is so funny (“Did you just pause the game?” Ray asks incredulously as the armed pair burst into a dealer’s house screaming at the computer-playing addicts to get down on the floor) that for a while the vibe is very much “What if Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s ‘’ Doug Judy took things up a notch from stealing cars?”, with a light dusting of Pulp Fiction as the duo riff before, during and after the action on the power of an authoritative voice, Manny’s relationship, and the necessity of researching a job.

There are also shades of Breaking Bad and, as the series expands to take in more characters from both sides of the law, and more of the problems and pressures experienced by people from various social and economic demographics, it gestures to The Wire too. Though Dope Thief never pretends to have that show’s ambition to stand as a state-of-the-nation piece, it is written by Peter Craig, who worked on The Batman and Top Gun: Maverick, the first episode is directed by Ridley Scott, and there is never a moment when you don’t feel like you are in supremely capable hands.

When Manny’s girlfriend Sherry moves in and Ray discovers that Theresa (Kate Mulgrew), the woman who raised him, is in need of money for (he believes) medical bills, Manny and Ray act on a tip that, although it will take them out of the neighbourhood and their comfort zone, should net them a bigger score. It does, but at the cost of five dead and one near-dead undercover DEA agent, Mina (Marin Ireland), plus the destruction of a key piece of the eastern seaboard’s main drug-run
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