Stan Lee's Lucky Man - Episode 1

The Woman (Sienna Guillory), the Sidekick (Amara Karan), Harry (James Nesbitt), the Femme Fatale (Jing Luci) and the Wife (just the most unflattering shot of Eve Best imaginable).

Harry Clayton is a man down on his luck. Separated from his wife and mistrusted by his colleagues because of a gambling addiction, he also owes a huge debt to Chinatown casino boss Freddie Lau, and Lau has just called in the marker. A chance meeting with a mysterious woman changes everything, and Harry finds himself stuck with a bracelet he can't remove and seemingly blessed with incredible good fortune. Then Lau dies and Harry suspects that someone was moving in on his territory; someone serious, who was supposed to receive the bracelet, and the luck, Harry now possesses.

Episode one of Stan Lee's Lucky Man is the bookkeeping episode, setting up the characters and situation and delivering the object of power to our hero. It is also a weird hybrid of British and American sensibilities. Harry and his colleagues look strangely lost in all this, a serious team of serious coppers adrift in a world of glitzy, four-colour, triad-run nightclubs. I found myself obsessing over the state of Steven Mackintosh's teeth; not because they're bad, but because they lack the cosmetic orthodontistry one associates automatically with comic book adventures. I wouldn't bat an eyelid at extreme closeups of Mackintosh delivering a solid bollocking to his shifty subordinate, except that said subordinate is wearing a magic bracelet that grants him luck powers.

The magic bracelet is on Sienna Guillory's wrist in this shot, but actually
there's remarkably few shots featuring it.

The bracelet itself is a fairly nondescript thing for a superhero power source; a simple bronze bangle. Its effects are similarly low key; little twists of fortune to favour the wearer. It's suggested that there is a price for this, however, and that the good luck has to be paid off in kind, in this instance by Harry's young daughter being in a minor traffic accident.

James Nesbitt plays roles like this in his sleep, so Harry comes across as more fully formed than perhaps the material deserves. He's a good cop who makes bad choices, but his ultimate motivations are unclear. The Woman says that she gave the bracelet to him instead of the man she was supposed to take it to because Harry is a good man, but we've seen precious little sign of that as he stalks his estranged wife, gambles recklessly, lies to his partner and jumps into bed with the Woman despite her never even mentioning a name (unless I missed it; the IMDb cast list calls her Eve.)

The supporting cast are decent, although Amara Karan's role as loyal and underappreciated sidekick is so far especially undeveloped. Stan gets his cameo, as himself this time, and I wonder if this should be considered part of the MCU. Probably not; someone would mention the spaceship crash in Greenwich.