Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura kill it in the stretched-out miniseries Dope Thief

You could do a hell of a lot worse than having Brian Tyree Henry and Wagner Moura—both very compelling screen presences in just about anything they’re in, quality be damned—lead your show. And the same can be said for getting Ridley Scott to direct your actiony premiere. That’s the enviable situation that Peter Craig, the co-writer of The Town and The Batman, finds himself in with his new miniseries for Apple TV+, Dope Thief. Which, at first glance, begs two big questions: Can this eight-hour crime story live up to its impressive pedigree? (Sort of.) And is it a good thing that it’s being released before Task, HBO’s upcoming limited series from Mare Of Easttown’s Brad Ingelsby that’s also about robbing drug houses in the greater Philadelphia area? (Absolutely.)  

Henry and Moura play Ray and Manny, respectively, best friends in Philly who…well, Ray sums it up rather succinctly to the rough-around-the-edges but ultimately sweet woman who raised him, Kate Mulgrew’s Theresa: “Me and Manny, we were posing as feds. We were ripping off drug dealers—scumbags, nobodies, you know? And we would take their money, we would take their drugs, and we would make sure that nobody knew who we was. Like, it was work. Research. Protocol. We were very, like, professional. Anyway, we went to the wrong house, and now these people are looking for us and they are gonna hurt anybody that we care about.” 

That’s the well-trodden gist of the show: Two small-time crooks get in over their heads trying for a big score—in this case, from a meth lab out in the boonies with ties to a motorcycle gang called the Alliance—and their worlds start crashing down. And it’s not just that crew—which Ray dubs “the Allman Brothers” and “31 flavors of white boy”—who are after them, although they are the most in-your-face intimidating, complete with a shadowy big bad who toys with them over the phone and rubs out folks who’ve crossed the pair’s path in some ridiculously elaborate ways. Soon enough, the DEA (particularly the scowling undercover agent Mina, played by Sneaky Pete’s Marin Ireland) and the cartel are too. 

With these many hours of tale to tell—Dope Thief is just the latest in a long line  of TV projects that feels like it should have either been two episodes shorter or, maybe better yet, a film—the show can’t help but feel stretched out, especially after our duo makes it through yet another casualty-heavy shootout. (There is one particularly intense, lengthy one that happens at the entrance of an emergency room that may have you wondering where the hell the cops or hospital staff or anyone—do people not use this Philadelphia ER?—might be.) So Dope Thief colors in the backgrounds of Ray and Manny, to mixed results, highlighting, say, the former’s fractured relationship with his father (portrayed by Ving Rhames, who is unfortunately saddled with lines like “[cartel members] don’t come here to see the Liberty Bell” and “you were used, son, like a shiv in somebody’s back”) and the latter’s dope addiction and girlfriend (played by Liz Caribel), who sees potential in him despite his red flags. (Ray has that going on, too, as Nesta Cooper’s lawyer confides, “I saw someone who was trying so hard to be a good person and had no idea what that meant” in one of the show’s many on-the-nose bits of dialogue.)