Apple TV released the first teaser and images on August 26. The series will premiere globally on November 13 with two episodes, followed by a new installment every Friday until December 25.
Anthony Mackie plays a disgraced FBI agent chasing an American career criminal played by Jamie Dornan. Their pursuit stretches across Europe, but the crime connecting everything is a raid on a bank vault buried beneath the streets of Zurich.
Every episode has three versions of the same problem
The title is the show's narrative architecture. Twelve months cover the planning. Twelve hours cover the heist. Twelve days cover what happens when everyone involved has to live with the result.
Apple says all three timelines will appear within each episode. That distinction matters. Rather than spending half a season building toward the vault, the series can show consequences before explaining the decision that caused them, or reveal a piece of preparation after viewers have already seen how badly it worked.
The first footage leans into that structure without explaining the entire mechanics of the robbery. Mackie is pursuing, Dornan is maneuvering, and both appear to be working with information the audience does not yet have.
Mackie and Dornan have done this pairing before
The two leads previously worked together in Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead's Synchronic. Their relationship in 12 12 12 is more adversarial: Apple describes the series as a zero-sum game between law enforcement and a professional criminal.
Both actors are executive producers as well as stars.
The ensemble includes Jack Kesy, Agathe Rousselle, Sallie Harmsen, José Garcia and Kali Reis. Apple has shown several of them in the first-look gallery without attaching enough character information to safely map every face onto a particular side of the heist.
That uncertainty is useful for a show whose entire format depends on withheld context.
Kari Skogland is handling more than the pilot
Dudi Appleton and Jim Keeble created the series and serve as executive producers. Kari Skogland directs multiple episodes, including the premiere, and is also an executive producer.
Skogland previously directed Anthony Mackie throughout Marvel's The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Her television work also includes The Handmaid's Tale, House of Cards and The Walking Dead.
Paramount Television Studios and Anonymous Content are producing the series. Earlier casting and production reports had been circulating for more than a year, but Apple’s August reveal is the point at which 12 12 12 finally acquired a public shape rather than simply a cast and premise.
The season will run straight through Christmas
Eight episodes are scheduled. After the two-part November 13 premiere, six weekly releases take the series through December 25.
That gives Apple seven weeks to play with its three timelines. A weekly schedule can be particularly useful for this kind of construction because information revealed in the aftermath of the robbery can sit with viewers for days before the preparation timeline explains it.
Apple has not announced a second season or described the eight episodes as the beginning of a longer multi-season plan. The currently confirmed story is this first eight-episode run.
The vault is in Zurich; almost everything else can move
Apple describes the robbery itself as an ambitious raid on a bank vault deep beneath Zurich. The pursuit around it travels across Europe, giving the series considerably more geographic room than a single-location caper.
The early imagery is restrained for now: surveillance, tense meetings, tailored clothes, weapons and two men studying each other rather than a trailer built entirely around the vault door exploding.
The first two episodes arrive Friday, November 13. Apple somehow resisted releasing a show called 12 12 12 on the twelfth.
