Money Heist (Spanish: La casa de papel, (lit. ’The House of Paper’) is a Spanish heist crime drama television series that debuted in 2017. The series traces two long-prepared heists led by the Professor, one on the Royal Mint of Spain, the other on on the Bank of Spain, told from the perspective of one of the robbers, Tokyo. The story is told in a real-time-like fashion and relies on a narrator, flashbacks, time-jumps, and hidden character motivations for complexity.
The series was initially intended as a limited series. Netflix acquired global streaming rights and re-cut the series into 22 shorter episodes and released them worldwide, The full series consists of five parts with varying numbers of episodes in each part.
The high-quality production was filmed around the world from its originating location, Madrid, to Panama, Thailand, Italy (Florence), Denmark, Germany. And Portugal
The series received several awards including the International Emmy Award for Best Drama Series, as well as critical acclaim for its sophisticated plot, interpersonal dramas, direction, and for trying to innovate Spanish television. The Italian anti-fascist song “Bella ciao“, which plays multiple times throughout the series, became a summer hit across Europe in 2018. By 2018, the series was the most-watched non-English-language series and one of the most-watched series overall on Netflix, having particular resonance with viewers from Mediterranean Europe and the Latin American regions.
Money Heist is engaging TV. The storyline becomes as believable as the American series “Mission Impossible” but the episodes become increasingly engaging with each one. The characters are attractive from their initial scenes and become more engaging with each appearance. Then, the music, often behind the scenes rather than dominating, is current (2020s) American and European with snippets from well knowns such as Arcade Fire, Buffy Sainte-Marie, James Brown, The Ronettes, The Crystals, Dusty Springfield and the classic composers like Beethoven, Debussey and Franz Schubert.
The story
A dozen young people are recruited by a planning genius, the Professor, who plans the biggest robbery in Spanish history, the Royal Mint of Spain. Their plan involves holding the Mint captive for days as they continually run the printing presses to build up the cache they plan to steal in the range of 500 million €uros. The amount sounds ridiculous if not outright impossible but becomes believable as the first heist progresses and the printing presses continue to run until the climax a week later.
The second heist is a follow-up to the first, the Professor explains his reasons for planning the robbery of the Bank of Spain, the amount to be stolen, almost 2 billion €uros worth of gold ingots. This is tons of gold, but again, in the style of Mission Impossible, how the heist is to be done becomes plausible once it is explained. Again, the robbers need time inside the Bank of Spain to transform the gold into a form suitable for transportation. This takes more than a week, all the while the robbers are inside the Bank of Spain.
The plot develops into the Spanish Army vs the robbers, and it is a see-saw battle, much like a chess game with the Professor making moves countered by the police and Spanish army. Because the robbery takes so long, there is time for the development of other stories to flesh out relationships, romances, reminiscences, and flashbacks that explain the planning further.
In short
In short, this is engaging TV that will have you enthralled and awed by the story as the plot unfolds with each episode. It is exciting to watch, captivating and attractive. The storyline becomes more believable with each move made by the opposing adversaries. The Professor’s moves to each move made by the Spanish officials are mesmerizing. There is a lot of tension and excitement with scenes of violence and shooting. Given all the gunfire in the series, there is a lot of “stage blood,” there are very few deaths, though the ones that do occur are quite sad.
The series has everything engaging TV should have tension, excitement, romance, plot complexity, mishaps and climaxes that leave you wanting to see more. This is the kind of series that will leave you breathless and wondering at the end of each episode and eager to see the next episode. The series succeeds and delivers marvellous TV with each episode.
Money Heist is TV worth watching.
The Professor
