Netflix’s French Heist Show Lupin Has A Very Hot — I Mean, Good — Reason For You To Watch

Tired: Emily In Paris. Wired: Lupin.

This weekend, the Netflix show became the first French series to hit the streaming service's U.S. Top 10 list, and it's easy to see why. Lupin has all the necessary ingredients: a delicious mystery, a generous scoop of brilliantly conceived heists, a dash of social commentary, and a spicy hot French lead. Bon appétit.

In the first of the five-part series, Omar Sy plays Assane Diop, a thief and master of disguise. His craft stems directly from the fictional character Arsène Lupin, a gentleman thief whose genius heists were documented in a book series by author Maurice Leblanc in the early 20th century. After learning that his father took his own life after being imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, Assane uses his talents to avenge his father's death and outwit those who stand in his way.

You may recognize Sy as Bishop from X-Men: Days of Future Past, or from 2011's Les Intouchables — that is, if you did the right thing and you watched the original French film instead of the bad 2017 Kevin Hart remake. Either way, Lupin lets Sy flex his spectrum of talents as our leading man. We get to see him as a gentleman in sharp suits, a beanie-clad bad boy, and a bespectacled shy nerd. And perhaps most enchanting of all, Sy has an incredible knack of being both all business and high drama as an action hero who still keeps his signature sense of humour.

If you're still not sure if you want to watch this history-making heist hunk, then consider this: Much of the obsession around Netflix's Emily In Paris last year had to do with how much it romanticised the City of Love, and how it painted Paris as a place full of beauty and possibility. Lupin still makes Paris look beautiful (listen, it's not that hard), and makes good use of its quirky nooks and sexy architecture as the foundation of the story. But it also very deliberately pokes at very real aspects France, as it artfully tackles racism and classism in ways that don't often make it into pop culture. Ringarde it is not.