Money Heist Review

The original premise is excellent: not a robbery of money but the printing of it, occupying the Royal Mint of Spain for days while manufacturing the ransom, with a planner outside directing by phone. The first two parts are genuinely tense, because the plan is intricate, the police negotiator is competent, and every complication comes from a specific human failure rather than a plot requirement. The imagery, red overalls and a mask of a Spanish artist, plus an old Italian partisan song, gave it an iconography that outran the show. Álvaro Morte's Professor is a wonderful creation.

Everything after the Mint declines. The Bank of Spain plan is bigger and less interesting, the characters spend enormous amounts of screen time shouting about their relationships in the middle of firefights, and several of them survive injuries that should be fatal because the series cannot bear to lose them. The flashbacks multiply, the running time balloons, and by the final part the tension has been replaced by sentiment about a family of thieves.