How Lupin stole the world’s heart
Netflix’s latest sensation is inspired by a gentleman thief beloved in France, writes Michael Hogan
The latest Netflix phenomenon is Lupin, a swaggeringly stylish and addictive drama which has just become the streaming service’s biggest-ever French show. The spellbinding story of a self-styled “gentleman burglar”, starring Omar Sy, it has come from nowhere to rank second on Netflix’s top 10 list in the US; in fact it has shot to the top spot in 20 countries and counting, making it, at the time of writing, the mostwatched programme worldwide. Netflix expects a staggering 70 million households to stream it in its first 28 days, overtaking Bridgerton, Cobra Kai and The Queen’s Gambit.
Zut, if you will, alors. But how has this professional thief stolen viewers’ hearts across the globe?
The closest comparison to Lupin is the Benedict Cumberbatch-led reboot of Sherlock, which became a similar global sensation in 2010. But as a thief rather than a thief-taker, Lupin’s hero is the anti-Sherlock – the sort of master criminal whom Holmes might pursue. A debonair “gentleman-cambrioleur”, with a monocle and top hat, the original character of Arsène Lupin is much loved in France. He first appeared in serialised magazine adventures by Maurice Leblanc in 1905. The dashing rogue chose deserving targets and pulled off his robberies with panache; he cared only about charming women, getting the last laugh and using his gifts for good. Leblanc went on to pen 17 Lupin novels and 39 novellas, and since then there have been two dozen Lupin films, countless stage plays, a popular Seventies TV series, a long lineage of comic books and several video-games.
This new take updates the action to contemporary Paris, where Senegalese immigrant Assane Diop (Sy) is inspired by Lupin to become a gentleman thief himself. We soon learn that he’s also a man on a mission, seeking revenge for a tragic injustice. When Assane’s family first came to France, his widower father Babakar became the valet to a wealthy white family, but was accused of theft by his employer, the powerful Hubert Pellegrini (Hervé Pierre). When Babakar was jailed, he hanged himself in his cell out of shame, leaving his 14-year-old son an orphan.
Now, 25 years later, and using the dog-eared Lupin first edition his father gave him for his birthday as a template, Assane sets out to take down the Pellegrinis. He hatches a plan to use his well-practised skills of sleightof-hand, subterfuge and disguise to expose Hubert’s crooked business practices. The opening episode finds Assane masterminding the heist of Marie Antoinette’s diamond necklace from an auction at the Louvre, and subsequent capers see Assane breaking into, then out of, prison, and kidnapping a police commissioner. We also get flashbacks to Assane’s youth and his tangled romantic history, alongside the overarching mystery of whether his father was framed and why.
If the show relies heavily on Sy’s charisma, that’s fine, given that he brims with the stuff. His breakthrough came with an award-winning turn as a reluctant care-worker in 2011 buddy movie The Intouchables, and he’s since appeared in the X-Men and Jurassic World franchises. A Lupin fan, he used the freedom afforded by Hollywood success to handpick his dream role.
“If I were British, I would have said James Bond,” Sy has said. “But in France, we have Lupin… He’s playful, he’s clever, he steals, he’s surrounded by women. Plus he’s a character who plays characters. For an actor, he’s the best.”
This isn’t a series in which characters have been gratuitously race-swapped. Our leading man isn’t actually Lupin, he’s just inspired by him. Cleverly, Assane’s race also becomes key to the plot. He talks about the “invisibility” of black faces in public spaces and exploits white people’s racial blindspots to pull off his tricks.
Moving in elite circles, he’s often the only black man in the room – which he can use as either magnet or cloak. When questioned by white police, he gently hints that his accusers are racist and turns it to his advantage. This social chameleon can befriend loan sharks and drug dealers in one scene, and seduce heiresses in the next.
“Lupin was a keen observer of society and we wanted Assane to be the same,” added Sy. “He doesn’t need much to disguise himself. He joins the type of people who don’t
get noticed, and he disappears.”
Rather like the tech-literate new Sherlock, Lupin updates a vintage creation with 21st-century trimmings: Assane is a computer whizz, adept at cybercrime, CCTV surveillance and creating deepfakes. But those parallels go way back. Arsène Lupin was quickly hailed as a French counterpart to Arthur Conan Doyle’s creation, not to mention Raffles, the society thief created by Conan Doyle’s brother-in-law EW Hornung. Lupin even met the ageing Holmes in a couple of Leblanc’s stories – at one point solving a riddle that his “rosbif” rival could not. (After legal objections from Conan Doyle, the detective’s name was changed to the endearingly silly “Herlock Sholmès” and “Holmlock Shears” when the stories were collected in book form.)
Another satisfying twist is that this thoroughly Gallic update has a British showrunner and co-writer in George Kay, whose CV credits include Criminal: UK and Killing Eve. Yet French TV is definitely having a moment. BBC Four is currently airing the final series of gritty Parisian police procedural Spiral, while spy drama The Bureau has won admirers on Amazon Prime. Celebrity-studded comedy Call My Agent! has become a wordof-mouth cult favourite – its fourth series arrived on Netflix last week.
In fact, non-Anglophone series are fuelling Netflix’s rapid expansion. More than 80 per cent of the service’s 37 million new subscribers in the past year came from outside the US and Canada, with Europe making up the most. From Spanish crime thriller Money Heist to German-Yiddish drama Unorthodox, passing by South Korean zombie-fest Kingdom, Netflix productions are increasingly breaking through national barriers.
Our worlds might have shrunk during lockdown but in TV terms at least, our horizons are expanding.
is the latest example. Just watch your wallet and jewellery.
The dashing rogue chose deserving targets and pulled off his robberies with panache