Heist on Neflix: It's nicely made but you can skip half of it

This is a new docu-series that recently dropped on Netflix and it consists of 3, 2-part episodes about a particular heist crime where the perpetrators initially got away with the crime and then later made some mistakes and ended up getting caught or turning themselves in.

I say that you can skip half of it because Netflix is back to their old tricks of basically recapping all of the first part in the second part in order to stretch it out to 2 episodes when they could have easily told the whole story in a single go.

I'm not really sure why they decide to stretch these things out into two episodes and a friend of mine who works in TV explained to me that these series, when they are being made, normally don't know who it is that is going to end up buying the broadcast rights for it and therefore they need to make it something that can apply to multiple markets. Normally when you see strange length episodes (like 26 instead of 30 minutes) this is because the shows have been designed to be capable of airing on network television, where commercials will appear, as well as on streaming services. I don't know if that is what happened with Heist but each episode is a strange amount of minutes so I suspect that it was the case.

[src](https://occ-0-1068-1722.1.nflxso.net/dnm/api/v6/E8vDc_W8CLv7-yMQu8KMEC7Rrr8/AAAABSEbsahRdNmFT0ViZhaf3SyBfcfNzwgHmKk0-Z9LeQSj93Rjy237MrPyxuDqxv-j-INh_mhG7zmELlOKfhX9JUR06P2w.jpg?r=874)

Each of the 3 situations they describe are meant to be some of the biggest monetary crimes of recent times and in all of the situations it appeared to both law-enforcement as well as the criminals themselves that they had gotten away with it and then something happens and the case gets reopened.

Some of the stories are narrated at least in part by the people that actually perpetrated the crimes so in that regard it is pretty cool. You've got armor car theft, airport theft, and also a strange one that involved the theft of really expensive bourbon.

I watched both sections of one of them only to realize in the 2nd part of the story, they basically just "tell you again" what they already told you in the first episode and then tack on a bit of new information. Therefore, other than the first one I only watched part 2 of both of the other 2 and still ended up with the entire story.

[src](https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Heist-Netflix.jpg?resize=768%2C432)

Just like other similar documentaries the presentation is done with a mashup of interviews, actual news story broadcasts at the time, and dramatizations of actual events. I think it was really well done but could still do without the filler that is totally unnecessary.

Should I watch it?

I think if you use my patented strategy of just watching the 2nd part of each story I think that almost anyone will enjoy this because the pace is kept moving and the recreations of the crimes and what the criminals were up to afterwards are very well done. They just didn't need the "part 1" of each of these stories. Give it a go on your own and see what you think. If you are compelled by the part 2 of each story, you can always go back and watch part 1 later to get more information.

Heist is currently available on Netflix in most regions, globally.