“This is not quite the true story of the Great Canadian Maple Syrup Robbery.”
The opening crawl of all six episodes of Prime Video’s “The Sticky” aims to make it clear that this strange-as-fantasy comedy thriller plays fast and loose with the truth. But it also draws parallels to its most blatant inspiration, the true story of “Fargo,” both the Coen brothers film and the Noah Hawley FX iteration. Once again, a crime saga unfolds involving some locals from the vast snowy northern part of the continent who get caught up in something that is much more complex and violent than they expected. “The Sticky” struggles for about an hour — the first two episodes — but then catches its eye just in time and ends in a cliffhanger that promises more chaos in the second season. It’s easy to miss a show like “The Sticky” at the end of a year that’s remarkably crowded with quality new shows like “Black Doves,” “A Man on the Inside,” “The Agency,” and “The Madness.” Getting lost, but this quick watch is good enough to find him, you bet.
Unlike “Fargo,” the premise of “The Sticky” is actually true. In 2011 and 2012, thousands of tons of maple syrup were stolen from a storage facility in Quebec. You probably don’t know (I don’t) that the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers accounts for 77% of the global supply. So there’s money in those trees, and the theft of syrup from a federal facility is the most valuable crime of its kind in Canadian history. The real criminals were led by Richard Vallieres, who planned to reroute the trucks and replace the water with syrup. The creators of “The Sticky” ignored most of the facts of the case, using the idea of a syrup robbery to tell a new story of quirky characters making bad decisions.
Iconic character actress Margo Martindale brings a bit of a twist to her crime lord persona from her incredible turn in “Justified,” as she plays Ruth Landry, a maple syrup farmer who falls on hard times after her husband slips into a coma. Has been. Trying to save her farm from destruction pits Ruth against power-hungry Leonard (Guy Nadon), who wants her land and trees at any cost. In an attempt to find money to avoid foreclosure, Leonard leads Ruth to Remy Bouchard (Guillaume Cyr), a kindly but dopey security guard at a nearby syrup warehouse. He is basically alone in the facility, even though he is asked for help, and has taken up stealing one barrel at a time to sell on the black market of syrup. That’s the case until he meets a Boston mobster named Mike Byrne (Chris Diamantopoulos), and they hatch a plan to steal the syrup while bringing in Ruth as a third wheel. Remy is the inside guy, Ruth is the brains, and Mike is the brawn. This is a proven formula.
The first two episodes of “The Sticky” — it only has 30-minute chapters for six episodes, meaning you can watch it all in less time than “The Brutalist” — feel stuck, as needed. A show like this with the right tone unable to balance character-building. They alternately try too hard to be quirky and not enough to advance the plot. Luckily, the show comes together once they clear their throats and get down to business. The middle part of the season becomes cat-and-mouse as two policemen try to figure out what’s going on, and our three “heroes” stay ahead of them. It’s well-written and well-directed (by Michael Dowse of ‘Goon’, one of the most famous Canadian comedies of all time), even if its heavy dose of Northern weirdness sometimes feels like ‘Fargo’ A little aggressively.
Jamie Lee Curtis, who produces the show and was once set to play the role of Ruth before she agreed it was a better fit for Martindale, appears as a true criminal in the latter half of the season. and give it a very different, deeper energy. One possible criticism would be that the show arguably fails to live up to its premise, setting us up for a memorable heist that doesn’t actually come, leading to potential chaos in the second season. One could imagine that the draw of Curtis and Martindale would make that happen, but it would be really disappointing if we didn’t find out what happens to Ruth, Remy, and Mike, true or not.
The entire season was screened for review. Premieres on Prime Video on December 6th,