DOPE THIEF – Season One

What happens when two friends decide to impersonate DEA agents and steal from small-time drug dealers? The obvious answer proves to be the correct one in this crime drama series streaming on Apple TV+. Dope Thief attempts to balance dramatic tension with action but deviates from expectations throughout its eight episodes, presenting unrealistic scenarios and misguided character arcs.

Based on Dennis Tafoya’s 2009 novel, the series follows Ray Driscoll (Brian Tyree Henry) and Manny Carvalho (Wagner Moura). Neither man can keep a steady job. While Manny tries to support his girlfriend Sherry (Liz Caribel Sierra), Ray only knows that a life of crime will help pay the rent. With a father in prison and a mother lost to an overdose, Ray was raised by his stepmother Theresa (Kate Mulgrew). Now 28 days sober, he’s just traded one addiction for another—drugs for theft.

“We just take our cut from the chaos, right?” Ray explains to Rick (Spenser Granese) in Episode 1. “It’s like when there are too many deer in the woods, right? You gotta call the hunters to trim the population. Otherwise the deer, they eat all the crop, wandering into the road.” Risk asks “So, you guys are kind of like wild deer?”

In this scene, Ray and Manny’s justification for stealing from the dope boys and giving to themselves speaks to the thematic messages at the centre of the series. Set in crime-ridden, graffiti-covered Philadelphia, the series suggests that to survive, you must become what you fear the most—the predators surrounding you. Neither of them wish to be the deer in this analogy, yet they quickly find themselves trapped when their plan to rob a country house goes awry.

The first episode, which was directed by Ridley Scott (Blade Runner), sees Ray, Manny and Rick rob a barren countryside house. When the heist goes wrong and Rick is shot dead, things spiral fast. They flee, leaving behind the house in flames and a witness, Mina (Marin Ireland), badly injured. Ray realises that he also left his handheld radio behind, and a mysterious voice speaks from Manny’s radio, demanding that they return the money they stole from the house.

From this we have our narrative drive, which is strong and entertaining. It hurls us through drug deals, shootouts, biker gangs, and a growing drug war between multiple factions including the real DEA. The voice adds a layer of mystery, but it fades after the early episodes, creating an uneven balance between high-stakes action and melodrama.

As the series unfolds, viewers may notice inconsistencies in character development—especially with any character who isn’t Ray. His flashbacks, often focused on a lost former flame who died in a car crash he likely caused while intoxicated, offer glimpses into his past. We see brief scenes of his and Manny’s early incarceration and Ray driving with his father Bart (Ving Rhames) before Bart’s arrest. Cinematographers Erik Messerschmidt, Yaron Orbach, and Eduardo Enrique Mayén shoot the film consistently well, with a steady camera and useful close ups, but these black-and-white scenes give the series a more creative edge, however sparsely they appear. They make a contrast between the clarity of Ray’s youth, where everything was simple, with the chaotic, often colourfully violent world of his adulthood. The problem here is that these moments are too fleeting, leaving characters like Manny, Bart, and Ray’s dead lover underdeveloped and emotionally distant.

Ving Rhames leaves a strong impression as Ray’s father despite his limited screen time. Bart appears frail and soft-spoken but possibly reformed, offering insight into Ray’s past and how he became the criminal he never wanted to be. Their tense dynamic adds emotional depth, especially when Ray is forced to confide in the man he despises most. These scenes showcase some of Brian Tyree Henry’s strongest acting, particularly opposite Rhames and Wagner Moura.

However, Henry occasionally contributes to the series’ uneven pacing, especially in the more sensational scenes that show Ray and Manny resorting to improvised shouting matches in the back seat of a car or on the street. These don’t hit the comedic points the series is aiming for, as viewers won’t take well to the bickering when we’re focused on figuring out how the boys are going to get themselves out of this. Moura starts off grounding the drama with sincerity, playing a man of God who has to resort to violent acts that defy his religious principles, but this is limited to the first episode. The rest of the season sees Manny quickly devolve into a weeping, underwritten figure who feels an exaggeration used for satire and humour rather than what we need from him. As the story centres solely on Ray, Manny’s arc suffers from limited screen time, lack of development, and an odd shift in tonality. By the end, he’s reduced to a thin sketch of a weak man, despite a brief moment of redemption in Episode 7.

What we could’ve had was a series about the comradeship of two friends striving to act morally however lost in a world that corrupts. After Episode 2, you might think that series creator Paul Craig presented it wrong: Ray could be acting alone in his quest for financial freedom. Marin Ireland, who plays the undercover agent Ray and Manny shot and left nearly disabled, makes use of her characters’ grief and volatility. Mina aims to uncover the identities of the men who botched her operation, injured her, and killed her colleague, who was also an undercover agent. This provides a useful conflict in the narrative, and her character adds context to the drug war that Ray and Manny find themselves started. Nesta Cooper plays Michelle Taylor, a young criminal lawyer who strangely feels more like a psychologist whenever Ray’s around. Although Cooper is a competent actress, Michelle seems out of place and underwritten for the context of a crime drama. Dustin Nguyen, playing Son Pham, is dynamic in his performance as an anti-villain.

Ultimately, Dope Thief succeeds at raising the stakes and delivering entertaining action, but its heavy-handed drama often leads to unrealistic scenarios and disappointing character arcs.

USA | 2025 | 8 EPISODES | 16:9 HD | COLOUR | ENGLISH

Cast & Crew

writer: Peter Craig.
directors: Ridley Scott, Peter Craig, Jonathan van Tulleken, Marcela Said & Tanya Haminlton.
starring: Brian Tyree Henry, Wagner Moura, Marin Ireland, Amir Arison, Nester Copper, Kate Mulgrew & Ving Rhames.