Anna Hartogh (Hannah Hoekstra) is a successful lawyer specialising in handling legal business contracts. One of her main clients is Simon Boetzellar (Benja Bruijning) who runs a jeans company, BootCamp. During a visit to his office, Anna spots a gold signet ring on the floor and decides to pop it into her handbag, rather than hand it in to Simon – this is despite her overhearing him and his secretary discussing him having lost a ring just seconds earlier.
If you want to avoid all spoilers, stop reading this article now.
As she leaves the building, she understandably has a terribly guilty conscious and decides to return the ring. But rather than going back into the office and say “oh, by the way, I spotted this on the floor earlier – is this your missing ring?”, she decides instead to put the ring in a padded envelope and give it to someone else to personally deliver to the reception.
Anna thinks that’s the end of the matter. However, her petty thieving comes back to haunt her a few days later when Simon tells her that he had cameras placed in his office and has her theft recorded on video. And added to that, he claims that no-one returned the ring to him, despite her protestations that she had it returned.
Simon is a bit of a cad, to say the least. Rather than turn the evidence over to the authorities, he decides to blackmail the foolish Anna by demanding sexual favours in exchange for his silence. Otherwise, he tells her he’ll not only tell the police and the partners in her law firm what she did but also make sure that the recording gets shared across social media. This would ruin her promising career and cause irreversible damage to the firm she works for.
Meanwhile, during that same fateful visit to Simon’s offices, Anna bumps into a police inspector, Max Badal (Minne Koole). Max has a cut on his neck following an altercation with a motorcyclist a few seconds earlier. It just so happens that Anna has a plaster in her handbag, and she cleans the wound and covers it with the plaster. Max is clearly smitten with Anna, and using his detective skills tracks her down and they begin a relationship.
Many dramas depend on usually sensible people doing something stupid. Anna – a lawyer, remember – nicks a ring, knowing full well that it belongs to her valued client. Would a respectable and already wealthy lawyer really do that? It pushes the realms of believability somewhat. But if that wasn’t daft enough, she then decides to put the ring in an envelope and gives that to a stranger to hand back. I mean, really?
This thriller from the Netherlands (‘de Ring' in Dutch) has some fine performances from its cast and the script is pretty good. My only issue is addressed in the previous paragraph – the preposterousness of Anna’s actions in the first place. But if you can get over that, this looks like a promising thriller.
Walter Presents: ‘The Ring' is available as a full boxset now on Channel 4 Streaming.
 is a successful lawyer specialising in handling legal business contracts.){kind=link}