Apple TV releases heist series 12 12 12 with Anthony Mackie and Jamie Dornan

Three originals on one night

Apple TV subscribers gained three new originals together: the heist series 12 12 12, the film Being Heumann and the holiday special Snoopy Presents: 12 Days of Snoopy. Overlapping premieres are not unusual on the service, but this time three titles arrived at once. The Snoopy special is the first of two holiday specials due this season, and the second, Fraggle Rock: A Holiday Gift, arrives on 4 December.

The story behind Being Heumann

Being Heumann is a film based on true events about Judy Heumann, and a 1977 protest she led ended as the longest occupation of a federal building in US history. The film is directed by Siân Heder, whose earlier feature CODA gave Apple its first best picture Oscar. That film also won Heder the award for Best Adapted Screenplay and earned Troy Kotsur the Best Supporting Actor prize. The premiere also introduced an accessibility option that places an American Sign Language or British Sign Language interpreter in a corner of the screen. The option works on select titles, including F1 The Movie, while Greyhound and Way of the Warrior Kid are due to gain support later this year, the latter premiering on 25 November.

Heist series 12 12 12

The eight-episode series 12 12 12 has its first two episodes available, and new episodes will arrive every Friday through 25 December. Anthony Mackie plays disgraced FBI agent Jack Strickland, and Jamie Dornan plays American career criminal Paul Galvin. Patrick Fabian and Kali Reis also appear in the cast. Jim Keeble and Dudi Appleton created the show, and Mackie and Dornan are among its executive producers. Each episode moves across three timelines: 12 months of planning, the 12 hours of the heist and the 12 days after it. The plot centres on a billion-dollar bank robbery with a vault raid in Zurich at its heart, and the two leads play a cat-and-mouse game across Europe.

Available now2

Series total8

Available now

2 episodes

Series total

8 episodes

Data from the article text

Cast and creators on the series

Mackie told the Press Association he had pushed for Dornan to join the project. He said Galvin is a character who wants to leave his criminal world behind and live as a normal person. Mackie, 48, and Dornan, 44, previously worked together on the 2019 sci-fi film Synchronic. Mackie said:

“I thought he was the perfect guy for it, and with the show now, I'm glad to see I was right.”

Dornan, who comes from Holywood in County Down, said he and Mackie wanted the show raised to the level the scripts deserved. He described the executive producer role as weighty:

“It's a big responsibility for us. We have that power to make sure we put the people in place to give it its best chance.”

Dornan joked that if he pulled off a heist he would be 'getting caught', saying he would bolt at the first alarm. Keeble told the Press Association that Mackie helped shape the FBI character from the start, drawing on his own path as one of very few Black FBI officers in his organisation.

Critical reception

One review called 12 12 12 a silly thriller that gets the job done. It gives Dornan credit for one of the strongest performances of his career and describes Mackie's Jack as a man so driven that he is ready to work through the Christmas break. The reviewer compares the rivalry between the leads to the one in Heat and says the premise is convoluted. The Zurich setting lets the show lean into Bourne-style and Eurothriller conventions, including a car chase. The Christmas Day timing, the review notes, recalls Die Hard.