The Sticky is Loosely Based on the Great Canadian Maple Heist
It’s just been hot. Too hot. So, the other day, we took a fan into the basement and put it on full blast while binging “The Sticky,” a comedy-drama series that may be of particular interest to you maple people. The Sticky, released in 2024 on Amazon Prime, is self-admittedly “absolutely not the true story of the great Canadian maple syrup heist.” But The Sticky is certainly a funny and well-made dramady loosely based on the biggest true crime in maple. (Importantly, the biggest true crime in maple is not the only one. In fact, recently we took the opportunity to regale you of the genre’s top ten. But we digress . . .)
The Plot of the Sticky is Predictable but Fun
In The Sticky, Ruth Landry, an anglophone Quebecois sugar maker, turns to crime in order to both save her farm from and take revenge on Leonard. Leonard being the evil head honcho of the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers with whom Ruth has antagonistic history. Unbeknownst to his nevertheless only-slightly-less-evil son Léo, Leonard is on a corrupt tear of bankrupting his neighbors, including Ruth, so that he can gobble up their farms by means of an anonymous holding corporation. When the corruption threatens her sugaring season, Ruth takes matters into her own hands by assembling a team to steal millions of dollars worth of syrup from the Federation’s strategic reserve and sell it on the black market, The team consists of Ruth herself, Remy, the disgruntled-yet-adorable Federation night guard, and Mike, a wannabe-mobster from Boston.
As the viewer can tell from the opening scene of Episode 1, murder ensues. By Episode 2, the viewer also knows to expect the slapstick humor that occurs when you throw together criminals who are bad at their “jobs,” and cops who are only slightly less bad at theirs. Other highlights include laughing at city people who don’t know how to dress for the cold. Always a pleasure.
The Sticky is Worth a Watch
The short-and-the-long of it is this: The Sticky is worth a watch! Especially if your sense of humor tends toward the Fargo-esque. Like Fargo, The Sticky is a dark, comedy-of-error prone crime drama set in a sparsely populated north country and is loosely based on actual events. And, also like Fargo, the action is propelled forward by a series of absurd decisions made by an oddball band of hapless, hickish criminals staying just ahead of smart-but-slow, rural law enforcement.
In short, The Sticky is a simple, six-episode story about bad criminals doing bad things badly in 2011 Quebec, always almost-getting-caught, and sometimes with entertaining if not outright funny French-Canadian accents. The snow is deep but melting in the sugar woods, and the cinematography is just bleak enough to make you remember last March. What’s not to love?!
The Acting is Good in The Sticky
The least-hapless of the band of three criminals is Ruth Landry, played by renowned character actor Margo Martindale. Despite the levity of the show overall, Margo plays Ruth with depth and in a way that makes us absolutely believe in her (even though she absolutely didn’t exist in the real live version of the story.) The often-cringey and always soulless Mark is well played by Chris Diamantopoulos. Props also go to whoever coached Chris on how to navigate snow and fall down on ice like a real city slicker, as well as to whomever picked out his absurd, not-enough-clothing-for-Quebec costuming. Guy Nadon is as fun a villain to watch as Leonard as Donald Sutherland is as President Snow in the Hunger Games. (Is this how Canadians do evil?) And the country-cop / city-cop dynamic between Gita Miller and Suzanne Clément is fun to watch too, if underdeveloped.
Our favorite character, though, was mild-mannered, French-Canadian Remy Bouchard as played by Guillaume Cyr. By somehow creating a softy criminal with a pure-as-snow soul, Guillaume made us really like this giant, bumbling, naive, man-baby despite his poor decision making and his lack of respect for himself and his father, Maurice Bouchard, played convincingly by Michel Perron.
But The Sticky is Over, Folks
Unfortunately for those of us who really liked it, the heist is off! Prime Video cancelled the show after one season, despite a cliffhanger of a season ending of the kind only Jaime Lee Curtis (who plays Bo, a competent mobster fixer) can pull off!
Oh well. Better luck next time, maple content!