The Sticky: a 'beautifully unhinged' crime caper

"The Sticky" begins, as most crime dramas tend to, with a body. But "this body happens to be submerged in a vat of maple syrup", said Aramide Tinubu in Variety.

In this new Amazon Prime series, writers Brian Donovan and Ed Herro have "put their own Fargo-like spin" on the real-life Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist of 2011, in which thieves stole almost 3,000 tons of the sticky sap from a storage facility in Quebec.

The "beautifully unhinged dramedy" follows "bitter maple farmer" Ruth (Margo Martindale) as she attempts to stop her business from folding while she's looking after her husband, who's fallen into a coma. When she finds out her farm is being shut down, she turns to local mobster Mike (Chris Diamantopoulos) and Remy (Guillaume Cyr), a "well-meaning security guard" at the Quebec Maple Association. Together, the "unlikely crew" band together for a "zany mission" to make off with $150 million of the "poorly guarded syrup".

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

However, "things don't exactly go according to plan", and the trio comes dangerously close to being discovered in almost every episode. "Breezy, fun and entirely insane", the series takes viewers on a "wild and wacky ride" filled with "high jinks and false starts".

"There are great moments of farce" and the action-packed episodes fly by so fast, "you could easily binge this in a couple of days", said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. Jamie Lee Curtis makes a cameo appearance (her production company backed the show), but the series is "tremendous fun, even before she shows up".

Such is its pace, you start to wonder why the series wasn't "honed into a single feature film", said Jesse Hassenger in The Guardian. And too much time is spent "dithering around the idea of the heist", rather than letting viewers "enjoy the details and mechanics of one".

Still, the trio of fictional characters at the heart of the crime caper are "hugely entertaining", said Pat Stacey in the Irish Independent. The "wonderful" Margo Martindale anchors the entire show, "grabbing a rare leading role with both hands".

All in all, "The Sticky" is a "delightful, suspenseful adventure, full of jokes, bizarre situations and a sharp cast", said Tinubu in Variety. "It never stops being a complete ball of fun."