12 12 12 Puts Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan on Opposite Sides of a Heist Across Europe

Photo: Francisco Anzola from United States, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Apple's new heist series has the strangest title of the season and one of the simpler premises. 12 12 12 is eight episodes, two of them arrive on November 13 and the rest land every Friday through Christmas Day. Anthony Mackie plays a disgraced FBI agent, Jamie Dornan plays an American career criminal, and the two of them chase each other across Europe in what Apple is calling a zero-sum game of cat and mouse.

The trailer, which came out this month, is slick in the way Apple's thrillers tend to be. Trains, rain, a job going wrong in a city that looks like Paris, and a lot of Dornan looking amused. Mackie is the straight man, which is a change from the Falcon years, and he is more interesting when he is angry. Both of them are executive producers, so this is a passion project for the two leads rather than something they were handed.

Photo: Quejaytee, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The supporting cast is a good sign. Jack Kesy, Agathe Rousselle from Titane, Sallie Harmsen, Jose Garcia and Kali Reis are all in it, and Olafur Darri Olafsson turns up because he is contractually obliged to appear in every European thriller. It was created by Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble, who wrote The Tunnel and a lot of British crime television, which explains the pacing.

Photo: Sebaso, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The character names floating around, Jack Strickland for Mackie and Paul Galvin for Dornan, come from the listings rather than the press release, so take them loosely. Are you a heist-show person, and does a weekly drop over the holidays work for you or do you want the lot at once?