Hulu's Culprits Queers the Traditional Crime-Drama Story

Hulu’s Culprits, a dark, violent heist drama, plays like an updated spin on a Guy Ritchie movie that ends up prioritizing a queer family above everything. In a genre that often treats the crew of a heist as a kind of "found family," Culprits never wobbles in its conviction that David (Nathan Stewart-Jarrett) must get back to his family and do whatever he can to keep them safe. The series, from We Care a Lot director J Blakeson, never feels like it's sweating to deliver some kind of progressive message, but in the realm of action-drama, this kind of queer centeredness is a rarity.

Culprits hits you with its tantalizing premise right off the bat: Several years after a crew led by master thief Dianne Harewood (Gemma Arterton) pulls off a massive heist at an off-the-grid London vault, its members — now scattered to the winds, unaware of each other — are murdered one by one. David, the muscle of the heist, has since abandoned his life of crime and moved to America, now going by Joe and engaged to Jules (Kevin Vidal), a widower with two kids to whom "Joe" is a loving would-be stepdad. When word of the assassinations makes its way to David, he realizes his old life has placed his new life in danger, and after coming clean to Jules, he takes off to London to link back up with his former heist team to figure out who's behind the killings, and how to stop them.

The combination of explicit violence (bodies get shot, stabbed, mutilated, incinerated, and otherwise made dead) and slick stylishness recalls the crime films of Guy Ritchie. Like Ritchie, Blakeson (who directs five of the eight episodes) makes a lot of bold aesthetic choices: David's plaid coat of suburban comfort, Dianne's fearsomely severe bob haircut; the assassin's purple tracksuit and Michael Myers-esque mask.

But while Ritchie's crews were composed of foul-mouthed, brutish men, Culprits has a more eclectic band of thieves. It's not exclusively a Girls, Gays, and Theys party, but the crew members the story focuses on are queer, women, and people of color. The narrative hops back and forth in time to "Before" (Dianne assembling the crew) "Then" (the heist itself) and "Now." As Dianne intends it, the team’s made up of strangers, known only by the noms de guerre she gives them: David is "Muscle," Sandman star Kirby is "Officer," and Niamh Algar (Raised By Wolves) plays the ice cold "Specialist." They end up recruiting Azar (Tara Abboud) and her grandfather Youssef (Kamel El Basha) as a pair of safe crackers called "Greaseman" and "Cracker." Everyone has a job to do, but no one is allowed to know too much about one another.

These barriers get broken down somewhat when the crew reconnects to find out who's trying to kill them, but Culprits insists on keeping walls between these characters. Very often, these get-the-gang-back-together plots and heist dramas tend to characterize the crew as a family. Think Money Heist or the Leverage revival (to name just a few TV-specific examples; film is full of them, in and outside of the Fast and Furious franchise). That's not really possible in Culprits. No one is allowed to know each other's real names; even when characters like David and Officer bond, they can never really know how honest they're being with each other.

When the group reconnects in the present timeline, questions of loyalty pervade, and no one is entirely sure who they can trust. Blakeson and his collaborators cleverly play with audience expectations throughout the series, and every time it seems like the crew is about to coalesce into a familial unit — David and Officer the (platonic) parental figures, Azar the unruly teenager, Specialist the quirky aunt with a silver tooth — something awful happens to remind us that this isn't a family, it's a group of thieves and criminals, and the longer David stays in this world, the worse off he'll be.

But the series doesn't need to establish a chosen family for David, because he's found that back in the States with Jules and their kids. Trailing the assassin through Europe puts Jules and the kids in danger, and David’s terror at not knowing whether they'll be alive when this is all said and done is palpable. Because it's a queer family in danger, this arc takes on an added significance.

It's impossible to divorce Culprits from current events — the rolling back of queer rights in the United States, the general authoritarian tide in the western world, "Don't Say Gay" bills, book bannings, anti-drag laws, anti-trans laws. That David, Jules, and the kids are a queer family of color raises the threat level even further. An early conflict in the series with a local white-collar criminal sees David articulating the fact that the system is not designed to protect people like him. It's designed to protect white people who can commit crimes and be insulated from the consequences of their actions. Blakeson makes sure to have this echo in the later episodes when we find out who has been targeting Dianne's crew and why.

Often in crime fiction, family is what makes the lead character vulnerable. It takes away their edge or it keeps them from being able to drop everything and run when things get bad. Finding a surrogate "family" within a ragtag group of scoundrels offers refuge from that vulnerability. In Culprits, it's the other way around. The heist is what's made David vulnerable. The crew is who he can't ever fully trust.

It's a theme that runs through many other character arcs in the show as well. Family lies at the root of characters' motives and their willingness to kill, either to protect or avenge their families. "That's what I like about the family man," says the big villain of Culprits after their identity is revealed. "He's got so much to lose." Queer families stand to lose a lot in this current climate. Culprits is a reminder that they also have a lot to fight for.

Culprits is now streaming on Hulu in its entirety. Join the discussion about the show in our forums.

Joe Reid is the senior writer at Primetimer and co-host of the This Had Oscar Buzz podcast. His work has appeared in Decider, NPR, HuffPost, The Atlantic, Slate, Polygon, Vanity Fair, Vulture, The A.V. Club and more.