Stan Lee's Lucky Man is a 2016 British supernatural police procedural/cop show created by Stan Lee & Neil Biswas. It airs on Sky1 in the United Kingdom, produced by Carnival Films and is scheduled to air for 10 episodes with the first episode airing on January 22, 2016. The show stars James Nesbitt, Eva Best, Sienna Guillory and Amara Karan.
Taking place in the Greater London area, Metropolitan Police Service officer Detective Inspector Harry Clayton comes across a woman named Eve, who gives him a Tang Dynasty bronze bracelet after a one night stand. While DI Clayton gets to investigating the murder of Triad boss Freddie Lau, he gets luck and more headway than the other CLP officers thanks to the bracelet's powers to grant him luck in finding significant clues to the case. He's later warned by Eve that while he gets good luck, others will have some misfortune happen to them as a means of balancing the yin and yang.
Due to the good reception, the show has aired three seasons.
The show provides examples of the following tropes:
- All Myths Are True: According to research done, the bracelet was used by the former Empress of the Tang Dynasty to gain influence over the Emperor. Many people began to fear her because of her influence and thus, made arrangements to have her killed.
- Ambiguously Evil: where to begin.
- Arc Words: "Sooner or later your/Harry's luck is gonna run out".
- Badass Longcoat: After faking his death and leaving the morgue, Blake wears a longcoat for the rest of the series.
- Big Bad:
- Golding for season 1
- Isabella for season 2
- Blake for season 3
- Big Brother Instinct: Harry lost a brother as a child and is now very protective over Rich. Deconstructed when Harry's enemies use this to get him thrown in jail.
- Britain Is Only London: Justified. The show entirely takes place in London.
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Doubling for London: Averted entirely for the show's setting.
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- Broken Pedestal: Harry becomes one to Suri over the coarse of season 1.
- Call-Back: Early on, Harry and his brother try to remove the bracelet using a power saw. The saw breaks and chunks of it almost kill the brother's assistant. In a later episode, some bad guys try to cut the bracelet off using a power saw and Harry does not fight them because he knows that the exact same thing will happen.
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: Isabella's bracelet causes all her suicide attempts to fail.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: The main reason Eve is still alive.
- Casual High Drop: Harry is trying to escape from the bad guys but to do so he must jump off a roof of a building. The jump is guaranteed to break some bones unless you are very lucky and land just right. Fortunately for Harry, he has an ancient bracelet that makes its wearer extremely lucky. He lands on the ground with no injuries.
- Later, in Series 3, Harry leaps off a tall building to keep Blake from shooting him. Harry walks away the next morning, only saying that he's "tired", and has a few cuts. He's not wearing the bracelet when this occurs.
- Clingy MacGuffin: The bracelet can't be removed.
- Cowboy Cop: Harry.
- Creator Cameo: Stan Lee is seen briefly in the pilot episode signing autographs at a comic book store.
- He also shows up in "Trojan Horse", thinking that Harry's going to kill himself by jumping on the Tube's rails.
- In "Facing Your Demons", he shows up as a bar visitor in Central when he says to Harry "For the record, I liked it."
- Cure Your Gays: Deconstructed in "Playing with Fire" when the killer turns to be a man who after realizing he's still gay kills the man who "cured" him, then his wife, and was caught trying to kill the priest who started it all so it could never happen to anybody ever again.
- Disney Death: Harry is seemingly electrocuted near the end of season two but is back by the next episode.
- In the third season, Harry leaps off a building to escape Blake. He is seemingly killed in the fall, but stands up the next morning and is only tired. He isn't wearing the bracelet.
- Driven to Suicide: Since the bracelet can only be removed by the owner's death, this is the fate of most previous owners.
- Dropped a Bridge on Him: Justified; abusing the bracelet will often lead to the abrupt death of someone around you.
- Frameup: In the 3rd season, one of the plot points is that Harry's being accused of murdering Isabella during the confrontation at Metropolitan Police Service HQ as The Scapegoat.
- The Gambling Addict: Harry has a serious gambling problem. It destroyed his marriage and he owes Freddie Lau. Once he gets the bracelet, he stops gambling because it's not really gambling if you always win.
- Good Luck Charm: The bracelet DI Clayton acquired. However, Eve warns him bad luck will happen to others every time he gets good luck.
- In Series 3, Daisy gives her father Harry a braided wrist bracelet for luck after he loses the good-luck bracelet.
- Hypocritical Humor: "You'd be a smartarse if you were smart."
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Anyone trying to shoot at Harry becomes an honorary member for the duration. However, it is implied that a highly trained sniper could kill Harry on the third shot because even the bracelet has limits.
- Make Way for the New Villains: At the start of season two Isabella helps Harry and Eve take down Golding.
- Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: The murder of Freddie Lau has DI Clayton investigate the case with DS Chohan. However, Harry realizes that parts of the case were tied to the power of the bronze bracelet and to those who wore it before.
- Money to Burn: Harry burns all of his casino winnings in order to neutralize any backlash that might happen due to his lucky streak. The next time he wins a lot of money at poker, he leaves the money on the table and tells the other players to burn it.
- I Never Said It Was Poison: Episode 5 of season 1; A suspect supposedly had no idea who Liliane Lau is, even though Clayton never said her last name aloud.
- Nudity Tropes: When Blake fakes his death and leaves the morgue, there's an extended shot of Rupert Penry-Jones' bum as he walks out.
- Police Are Useless:
- Played with a bit. The MPS is on top of the case, starting with the murder of Lau. But with the help of Clayton's bracelet, he's able to get a major headstart on the murder case and the others that soon follow. While the others are stumped, his luck leads him straight to major clues.
- Averted at the end of the first season. Once the other cops realize that Harry was right, they quickly follow the evidence and track down the bad guys as fast as Harry.
- Played in the third season where the MPS and the Hong Kong Police Force hunt Harry down because he murdered Isabella when a shot of it was seen in surveillance footage, which was obviously forged.
- Power at a Price: The bracelet basically gives the wearer good luck by "taking" the luck from others, with the result that every time Harry does something really unlikely something bad is likely to happen to at least one of his friends or family.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: As much as a Cowboy Cop Harry can be he refuses to commit the worst crime of all.
- War for Fun and Profit: Vincent Lermentov made his fortune by buying large quantities of gold right before a major war or disaster caused the price of gold to rise. It is unclear if the bracelet caused these calamities so Lermentov could profit from them or if it simply predicted these events and caused him to buy the gold beforehand.
- Wham Episode:
- "Facing Your Demons": Blake successfully frames Harry for killing Isabela.
- "Run Rabbit Run": Blake uses the cover of a MI-6 agent to prove his frameup of Harry is legit.
- "The Art of War": Eve takes out Suri in public.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Blake corrupting the bracelet comes back to bite him when Eve later puts it on him, cancelliing out the good-luck bracelet he is wearing on his other wrist.
