Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Everybody Loves Diamonds’ On Prime Video, About A Gang Of Small-Time Theives Who Pull Off A Massive Diamond Heist

Most heist movies and shows generally have a similar order of events: A scheme is hatched, a team is formed, and a plan is made. Then the heist itself happens. The better shows in this genre mix up the formula. A new Italian-produced series, presented in multiple languages, does just that.

EVERYBODY LOVES DIAMONDS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Scenes of the World Diamond Center in Antwerp, and a vault where most of the safe deposit boxes have been opened and ransacked.

The Gist: On Valentine’s Night in Antwerp, three people are waiting in a van. Leonardo Notarbartolo (Kim Rossi Stuart) turns to the camera and says, “Who has never had the urge to steal something?” He and Ghigo (Gianmarco Tognazzi) and Sandra (Carlotta Antonelli) are waiting for the fourth member of their crew, Alberto (Leonardo Lidi) to come up out of a manhole. When he finally does, he declares it “my best Valentine’s Day ever.”

That makes sense, since they just robbed the World Diamond Center, which was supposedly impenetrable. As they speed back to the warehouse where they planned the heist in order to get rid of all of the evidence, they panic when a police van follows them, only to see that it’s responding to another call. They gather their papers and tools, and Albi erases the hard drives and destroys all computer equipment, and they all go their separate ways.

The next day in Brussels, Inspector Albert Mertens (Johan Heldenbergh), head of the country’s Diamond Squad, is in a rehearsal for an award ceremony at the royal palace. He’s getting the award for protecting the country’s diamond market so well. Of course, that’s when he gets the call about the robbery at the World Diamond Center.

As news spreads of the massive robbery, worth up to $1 billion, Mertens and his detectives Khadir (Issam Dakka) and Nadone (Jean Janssens) arrive in Antwerp and survey the scene. Given how well fortified the building and vaults were, he’s trying to figure out how it was penetrated; he figures whoever did it had inside help.

As Judith DeWitt (Synnøve Macody Lund), the director of the WDC, addresses worried jewelers and diamond merchants who work at the market, a familiar face is in that crowd: Leo Notarbartolo. He has somehow set up a diamond merchant business at the center, which explains why he was the mastermind of the robbery. He has to pretend to be devastated that his diamonds were stolen, but he secretly celebrates pulling off what he’s thinking is the perfect robbery.

Leo is in so deep that he has to lie to his wife Anna (Anna Foglietta), who lives in their hometown of Turin, Italy. In fact, he tells her that since his business is devastated, he’ll be returning to Italy.

Mertens is under pressure from the country’s interior minister to get this case solved, and he’s further frustrated when he learns from forensic expert Ludwig Furtmeier (Mathias Kahler-Polagnoli) that the diamonds that were supposedly left behind by the burglars were actually synthetic. In other words, they knew enough to sub the synthetics for the real thing in order to slow down the investigation.

Khadir is summoned to a wooded area, where a garbage bag full of tools used in the robbery and an invoice is found. And just as Leo is celebrating the fact that he’s going to get away with this heist, Mertens busts in and arrests him. Even as he denies to Mertens that he had anything to to with the robbery, he knows he was set up by someone in his crew. But who?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Everybody Loves Diamonds is more or less a classic heist story, along the lines of Heist, Money Heist, Lupin, Choona, The Great Heist, etc.

Our Take: Like most heist-centric series, Everybody Loves Diamonds has a slick style that’s full of flashy graphics, fast cuts and a high-energy soundtrack. To its style palate it also ads fourth-wall-breaking, in the form of Leo’s asides to the camera to show just what he’s thinking in a particular moment.

But where the show really distinguishes itself is in how it starts. We don’t get episodes worth of setup and planning; the series starts with the successful robbery, then goes back and forth. As Leo tries to figure out just who betrayed him, we’ll see just how he got this team together and managed to infiltrate the WDC by posing as a jeweler. But we’re also going to see the investigation by Martens and his team, which will reach all the way to Turin and Leo’s wife Anna, as well as the other team members, who have spread themselves out.

But there are also other issues; part of Leo’s long game at the WDC was involvement with Judith, the center’s director. How that plays out will affect Leo’s fate. Also, we get introduced to the backstories of Sandra, Ghigo and Alberto, all of which have various familial entanglements that likely had something to do with how this group got together in the first place.

While the show’s main antagonists are the delightfully deceptive Rossi as Leo and Heldebergh as the officious, but confident-for-a-reason Martens, we’ll also see Rupert Everett along the way as Leo’s shady attorney. In other words, the way this show has set up this story has given it a lot of layers and a lot to look forward to watching as Leo tries to not only figure out who betrayed him but then go back and cash out his share of the diamonds.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: As he sits in his isolation cell, Leo looks at the camera and says, “Whoever betrayed me made a big mistake.”

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to the other three members of Leo’s crew: Gianmarco Tognazzi as Ghigo, the alarm expert; Carlotta Antonelli as Sandra, the lock-picker; and Leonardo Lidi as Alberto, the hacker. All three will have their stories explored as the season goes along as Leo figures out who betrayed him.

Most Pilot-y Line: There’s a segment where Furtmeier explains the concept of synthetic diamonds to the audience; part of it is him interrupting a proposal to tell the woman getting the ring that the diamond is synthetic. It’s fun but feels like a stylistic flourish.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Everybody Loves Diamonds works because it takes the standard heist story and jumbles up the order of events, getting audiences more interested in the characters involved than just the planning and build-up.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.