Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan Lock Horns in Heist Series 12 12 12

Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan star as adversaries in 12 12 12, a new eight-episode heist thriller built around a single, gleefully absurd premise: a major theft takes 12 months to plan, 12 hours to execute, and if the thieves are not caught within 12 days, they never get caught at all.

The series earns its audience early. A contortionist crawls out of a safety deposit box in the wall of an underground Swiss bank vault, legs wrapped around his waist, feet resting on his lumbar spine, before landing on hands and knees on the tiled floor. For this reviewer, that image alone secures an hour of undivided attention.

Who is chasing whom?

Dornan plays Pauly Galvin, son of a New York criminal and the mastermind of the central robbery. He has started a new, crime-free life in Marseille with his pregnant fiancée Severine, played by Agathe Rousselle. His brother Bobby (Jack Kesy) drags him back in: gambling debts have put the whole Galvin family in danger, and the criminals he owes want Pauly's legendary planning services.

A team assembles. It includes Severine's father Serge, played by José Garcia, included because Pauly needs a tunnel and Serge is, in the script's full description, "a tunneller". The target is $800m in Swiss notes — a literal ton of money, moved with a diverted subway train, a big underground drill and jet-skis aplenty.

Mackie dominates the third timeline as Jack Strickland, a grieving, self-loathing FBI agent in Zurich. Strickland carries guilt from the death of a fellow agent during a failed attempt to foil the Galvin brothers' last robbery in Newark. Armed with US street smarts and a tip-off, he starts spotting clues the complacent Swiss force has missed and closes in on his prey almost immediately.

How does the structure work?

Each episode plays out across the three timelines. Viewers gradually see how the robbery was planned, how it went down, and how the 12-day escape window unfolds. The verdicts differ by timeline: the planning goes "very well, thank you"; the execution "could have been better"; and the pursuit stretches credibility past breaking point.

The premise itself wobbles under scrutiny. A grand theft could take any amount of time to plan, and the notion of a fixed 12-day cut-off for capture seems, as the review puts it, "unlikely". The counter-argument is the contortionist in the vault: once you have seen him, you adjust your suspension of disbelief accordingly.

What does this change for viewers deciding what to watch? The answer is a qualified recommendation. 12 12 12 is, by the review's account, "fantastically slick, and fantastically well-shot and structured". But once the novelty of the triple timelines wears off, the inspiration runs dry. The troubled cop, the criminal trying to go straight, the troublesome brother, the endangered new family and the gang fracturing under pressure have all been done many times before.

The verdict is blunt. "It's great fun," the review concludes. "But is it 12/12 fun? No. It is three out of five." Dornan, meanwhile, continues the career rebuild that began with 2013's The Fall — a run the reviewer would rather not dwell on, glossing over the 50 Shades films and the one where he played a romantic hero who believed he was a bee.

For audiences seeking glossy escapism over originality, the eight episodes deliver exactly that: a slick, well-constructed caper that entertains without ever threatening to reinvent the genre.