Joan review – Sophie Turner stars in this wild true story of a jewel thief who goes from rags to riches | Television & radio

JAn Hannington’s story makes you wonder what on earth you’ve been doing with your time. How does someone manage to overcome a loveless childhood, an abusive marriage and miserable single parenthood to become a successful jewel thief and then an influential player in the criminal underworld known as the Godmother? It’s all I can do to shower three times a week.

Hannington told her story in her 2002 autobiography, I Am What I Am (since reissued as Joan), which has been turned into this six-part drama. At its core, the adaptation is a crime story, but enough of the protagonist’s background is outlined – including Joan’s need to care for her daughter Kelly (Mia Millichamp-Long) – to keep you emotionally invested. However, the stolen jewelry is beautiful. Joan’s adventures begin in the 1980s, when greed was good and we knew how to show it off.

The program opens with Joan (Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner, proving herself with a role she can sink her teeth into and nail some accents) sitting at her dressing table in a lavish hotel room. Her back is covered in scars indicative of child abuse, but she’s busy dressing in designer clothes, adorning herself with flashy gems and stuffing rolls of cash into her toiletry bag, before emerging with a red wig and more fur than Sansa Stark. confidence oozing from every pore. Then we flash back four months. It’s clear that our Joan has come a long way in a short time.

In quick succession – the mark of a good caper – we see Joan fleeing her abusive boyfriend Gary; the criminals who threaten to kill her and her daughter in revenge for his latest miscalculation; and the police, who want her to prank them. She places Kelly in child protective custody, with the understanding that she will have her back when she finds a new home and a new job. Then Joan throws herself at the mercy of her sister, Nancy (Kirsty J Curtis). Nancy reluctantly agrees to let her stay on the couch for a few nights and give her a job at her hair salon, with one caveat: “None of your damn chaos.”

Chaos ensues and Joan soon finds herself in another job, this time at a jewelry store owned by a creep named Bernard (Alex Blake, who makes you wince every time he slips into a scene). His not-so-novel approach to after-hours inventory sends her running for safety again, but not before swallowing a handful of loose diamonds on the way out. Sometimes I wonder in idle moments how many stories there would be to tell if men knew how to behave and keep their hands and fists to themselves.

One careful sift later – after a chance meeting in a pub with a shady antiques dealer and former prison guard named Boisie (Frank Dillane) – and we’re off. “Just one job” becomes much, much more for Boisie (perhaps because Joan insists on getting her fair share). Her brutality and intelligence – and the willingness of men and people to underestimate her – mean that she is entitled to a lucrative career and the gradual acquisition of the respect that has always been denied her by respectable society.

It’s great fun to keep the genuine sadness and fear behind Joan’s bravery in beautiful tension with the glorious adrenaline rushes and addictive glamor of the robberies and Spanish smuggling raids. Turner – at least in the two episodes available for review – never lets us lose sight of the fearful mother in the criminal, nor the core of desperation that drives her.

The cracks start to show at the end of the second episode, when Joan declares that she will go all in with Boisie – in love and labor – to earn the money that would “prove myself on the social side.” If there is bravado, fine. If it’s a straight line, it doesn’t fit the dashing but ultimately smart woman of the previous few hours. I’d also like to know if a smart woman in the 1980s would use social services as an emergency daycare center without suspecting that things would unfold exactly as they did with Kelly, but that’s a minor quibble.

The serviceable script doesn’t ask too much of the strong cast (including Gershwyn Eustache Jr as Albie, Boisie’s warmly menacing best friend and fence), but they produce as solid a piece of entertainment as you could wish for, with just a little bit of entertainment . escapism and a soupçon of suspense. It’s enough to while away an autumn evening or six.