Stream It Or Skip It: ‘6ixtynin9 The Series’ On Netflix, Where A Woman Finds A Box Of Money And Her Life Becomes Chaotic

It seems that lately we’ve been comparing a lot of series to Breaking Bad, or at least mentioning how closely they hew to the classic series’ scenario. That’s where a seemingly “good” person turns to a life of crime, usually via reactions to circumstances that are out of the ordinary. A new series from Thailand presents that scenario in the person of a woman who has just been laid off from her job.

6IXTYNIN9 THE SERIES: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A tray of food. Then we see a woman eating by herself while scrolling through her phone.

The Gist: Life is not going well for Toom (Mai Davika Hoorne). She comes out of that lunch to find that her car has been booted. She then dashes into work at an insurance agency, just in time to see her boss tell everyone over Zoom that the pandemic and the financial slowdown means that he has to lay off 12 members of the staff. They’re essentially picked at random, and Toom is one of the unlucky ones.

She brings her personal effects back to her flat, where a young neighbor (Pluto Pruet Nakprad) helps her up the stairs. He notices that she flips the “9” on her door right-side-up to show a “6”. He asks if people often go to the wrong flat, and she says it happens sometimes.

Meanwhile, a fighter throws a Muy Thai match; a box of money will be placed in front of a designated flat. Also, a young woman wants to get a tattoo professing her eternal love for her boyfriend Tud (Patara Eksangkul).

Toom contemplates killing herself, but wakes up the next morning and hears knocking at her door. She sees a package, opens it up, and is shocked by the contents. She puts it back out to see if anyone claims it, but when no one does, she brings it back in. It’s filled with cash, about a million baht (around $28,000). She calls a friend, who encourages her to not keep it, though Toom has other ideas.

Inevitably, two men in Muy Thai warm-up suits come to collect. She claims she doesn’t have the money. At first they go away, but then they break down the door and start searching the flat. At this point, she’s taken the cash and stowed it in a plastic envelope. As the two thugs are tossing the flat, the bag of money plops to the floor. Instead of giving it up, though, Toom takes a different course of action, one that will turn her life upside down.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? 6ixtynin9 The Series is based on a 1999 film with the same name and similar plot. In a lot of ways, it’s a Thai take on the Breaking Bad scenario.

Our Take: Directed by Pen-Ek Ratanaruang, 6ixtynin9 The Series moves at a pace that some might consider to be slow; normally, we would be in agreement about that. But the slow pace of the first episode, punctuated by gaps of quiet, is a very purposeful decision on the part of Ratanaruang. He’s looking to not only show how pathetic life is for Toom at the moment the box of money lands at her door, but it is there to build the psychological stakes of her keeping the money, despite where it comes from.

Given the basic plot of the series mirrors that of the movie, we were a bit surprised that the expanded runtime wasn’t used to give a little more background about Toom, other than the fact that she drives a shitty car, has been laid off from her job, and seems to like wine and Stephen Colbert t-shirts. It could be because Toom is essentially a blank slate, who is tougher than she seems and is just desperate enough to kill for money that she knows a) isn’t hers, and b) likely belongs to some pretty bad characters.

From here, of course, Toom’s life becomes anything but dull and pathetic, and how she manages to keep the money and stave off the people who want it will drive the action going forward. We just wonder if there is enough story to fill a six-episode series.

Sex and Skin: Tud’s tattooed girlfriend is topless in a couple of scenes.

Parting Shot: After Toom looks at the grisly scene in her flat, she closes the door. The “6” on the door again flips down to make a “9”.

Sleeper Star: We’re thinking that Pluto Pruet Nakprad, who plays Toom’s milk-gulping neighbor, will have more of a role going forward.

Most Pilot-y Line: The scenes with Tud and his green-haired girlfriend seem superfluous at first, but it feels like Tud will be involved somehow. Though we found it oddly funny that Tud’s girl wants her own version of Johnny Depp’s “Winona Forever” tattoo.

Our Call: STREAM IT. We’re a little concerned that there isn’t enough material to sustain 6ixtynin9 The Series, but we did like the quiet tension that is built up during the first episode.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.