Let's explain that title first. Driven but disgraced FBI agent Jack Strickland (Anthony Mackie) has been taught that any elite, megabucks heist takes 12 months to plan and 12 hours to execute; once it's been carried out, if law enforcement haven't captured the thieves within 12 days, they never will.

So as brilliant but compromised career criminal Paul Galvin (Jamie Dornan) aims for one spectacular last job by stealing a billion dollars in Russian mafia cash from a vault beneath the streets of Zurich on Christmas Day, this thriller hops between three timelines charting the planning, the heist and the aftermath, a month/hour/day at a time.

The name of the show tips you off up front: 12 12 12 is trying too hard. Think of the classic heist thrillers of old, how they stride elegantly on, always one step ahead of you, the elements of the story meshing precisely, like the parts of a Swiss watch. 12 12 12 features several actual Swiss watches, but is otherwise the opposite of all that. It is forever either pedalling furiously to keep the vehicle on the road, or stopping to explain itself. It is a drag.

The core problem is that once the post-heist timeline gets going, it's hard to care about the earlier two, because they're working their way back towards where we've already been. Who's that woman Paul is surveilling through a telephoto lens? We already know. Will his plan to manipulate the Russians into placing their cash in the vault of his choosing work? We already know, and because a switch to another timeline is always looming, 12 12 12 doesn’t have the time to embed involving stand-alone stories in the grand narrative.

The temporal issue cuts the other way, too. Even the post-heist section, blessed as it is with an old-fashioned chase in which the robbers ingeniously make use of a subway train and a mountain hideout, has to present us with characters interacting in ways that are influenced by events we haven’t seen yet. The split timeline gimmick is the main selling point of the series, but the show would be better without it.

No structural revamp would, though, be able to save dialogue and characterisation that are, however you arrange them, not as smart or deep as they need to be. Jamie Dornan is fine, albeit underpowered, as the wise and capable leader of a diverse, ragged crew of thieves. As Strickland, Anthony Mackie gets the worse deal: he is handed lines that are straining every sinew to come across as stylishly tough and clipped, but end up making the actor say things that Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis would have rejected as too cheesy 40 years ago.

We first meet Strickland as he stands alone in his office, ruminating furiously as Little Drummer Boy plays. "Rapa-rum-f***in'-pum," he says to nobody. Then later, when a Swiss jobsworth tries to stop him performing heroic but unconventional policing feats, like the maverick hero he is: "I’m not here for the cuckoo clocks!" Strickland is a tense man, because of his shameful past and because of the bitter Zurich cold; at home, we are tense due to deep cringe.

Somehow, though, Strickland isn’t the worst character: Jack Kesy is given no chance to shine at all as Bobby Galvin, the elder brother to whom Paul owes a lifelong debt, but whose aggressive hotheadedness destroys all his little bro's carefully constructed plans. Perhaps it's believable that a criminal gang, even a very high-level one, would include a relentlessly unpleasant boor who simply swears, shoots or swings a fist at every situation he's put in from breakfast to bedtime, like a drunken Donkey Kong; but Bobby certainly isn't watchable.

12 12 12 does very gradually acquire some momentum in the back half of the season, especially when a late twist upends what we’ve seen so far. But long before then, the game's up.

Add 12 12 12 to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more.

Check out more of our to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to .