TV review: Dope Thief would be up there with The Wire if characters were more interesting

Brian Tyree Henry as Ray Driscoll and Wagner Moura as Manny Carvalho in Dope Thief. Picture: Apple TV+

Dope Thief (Apple TV+) is good. It’s not great straight away, but there’s enough in the opening episodes to give it a shot.

The premise is pleasingly simple. Manny and Ray are low- level crooks in Philadelphia, robbing drugs and money from street dealers, a gig they reckon is like stealing candy from babies.

They pretend to be Drug Enforcement Agency agents, with Ray delivering an ‘I’m your only friend here’ good-cop spiel, while they tie up the dealers and rifle through their stuff.

It’s made clear that Manny and Ray aren’t men of violence. If things turn truly nasty, they’re toast. So it’s not a good idea to rob a vicious cartel. That’s what they do at the end of the opening episode, following a tip from a half-friend you wouldn’t trust to tie your laces.

It’s very believable. There is a nod to the grit of The Wire in the damp squalor of urban Philadelphia, with rural brutality that feels like the good bits of True Detective.

There is a softer edge to parts of the show. Ray wants money to help fund medical treatment for the woman who raised him. Manny has a nice partner in a nice house and would like to give a Christian burial to a guy with ‘Zero f**ks given’ written on his jacket, straight after shooting him.

The story is good, the stakes are high, the violence is going to catch up with them. It would be up there with The Wire and True Detective if the characters were more interesting. Ray is the better of the two, coping with addiction and pent-up resentment for his deadbeat dad.

Manny is a thin character, led along by Ray, without much to say for himself. There isn’t enough charisma, they just don’t have the heft you get from Matthew McConaughey or Idris Elba in True Detective and The Wire. And they are not given any life beyond the plot. But, in fairness, it’s hard to get into background stories when a guy with ‘Zero f**ks given’ on his jacket is chasing you with a gun.

I was going to say there is very little humour, until episode two finished with a very funny joke about Meat Loaf.

This grew on me. It’s more than just a solid thriller about two guys who get in over their heads. There are good performances, not least from Kate Mulgrew as Ray’s mother figure. There’s a good twist about the big angry drug cartel that I won’t reveal. And most of all, the action is relentless. Give it a watch.