Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Money doesn’t grow on trees in eastern Canada, but it does flow within them, so to speak. When the sap of the humble maple is converted into syrup it becomes a kind of gloopy gold that has been valued up to 25 times the price per gallon of oil. At full capacity, the Quebec Maple Syrup Producers’ reserve holds some $400mn worth of the sweet stuff — $18.7mn of which was stolen by a sticky-fingered crew back in 2011. The so-called Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist is the inspiration behind a new heist caper comedy on Prime Video. While the time, place and some of the vague details of the audacious robbery are based on the actual events, the six-part series opens with a disclaimer that “this is absolutely not [a] true story”. What The Sticky is, however, is an offbeat, small-town tale of ambition, greed and desperation, chilly climes and chilling crimes, that plays a little like a Canadian cousin of Fargo.At the centre is an improbable trio of wannabe maple thieves: “a guard, a mobster, and well-known pain in the ass” — as the latter of the three puts it herself. She is Ruth Landry (Margo Martindale), an endearingly gruff farmer at war with the underhanded head of the maple association who is trying to price her out of her land.Needing to raise funds to care for her comatose husband, Ruth agrees to lend her expertise to the hare-brained schemers plotting a raid on her nemesis’s warehouses. The first, Remy (Guillaume Cyr), is an under-appreciated nightwatchman who hopes to get one over on his haughty bosses; the other, mafia debt collector Mike (Chris Diamantopoulos), seeks to make his own fortune at any moral cost.Things, needless to say, do not go to plan, as an ostensibly victimless crime soon becomes tainted by the spillage of another kind of viscous liquid. Yet despite moments of violence and the cold-hearted bureaucracy, The Sticky largely leans into the absurdity and anarchic spirit of the unlikely ensemble. That it’s led by a performer so synonymous with supporting roles she’s affectionately come to be known as “esteemed character actress Margo Martindale” is an inspired casting choice by series producer Jamie Lee Curtis, who herself has an extended cameo as a cane-wielding mob fixer. Her appearance is an added treat in a short-but-sweet series that’s dark and moreish and anything but syrupy.★★★★☆On Prime Video from December 6
