Money Heist
| Money Heist | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Spanish | La casa de papel |
| Genre | |
| Created by | Álex Pina |
| Starring | |
| Theme music composer | Manel Santisteban |
| Opening theme | "My Life Is Going On" by Cecilia Krull |
| Composer(s) |
|
| Country of origin | Spain |
| Original language(s) | Spanish |
| No. of seasons | 4[a] |
| No. of episodes | 31 (list of episodes) |
| Production | |
| Executive producer(s) |
|
| Production location(s) |
|
| Cinematography | Migue Amoedo |
| Editor(s) |
|
| Camera setup | Single-camera |
| Running time | 67–77 minutes (Antena 3) 41–59 minutes (Netflix) |
| Production company(s) |
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| Distributor | Netflix |
| Release | |
| Original network | |
| Picture format |
1080p (16:9 HDTV)
|
| Audio format | 5.1 surround sound |
| Original release | 2 May 2017 – present |
| External links | |
| Website | |
Money Heist (Spanish: La casa de papel, transl. The House of Paper) is a Spanish television heist crime drama series. Created by Álex Pina, the series was initially intended as a limited series to be told in two parts. It had its original run of 15 episodes on Spanish network Antena 3 from 2 May 2017 through 23 November 2017. Netflix acquired the global streaming rights in late 2017. It re-cut the series into 22 shorter episodes and released them worldwide, beginning with the first part on 20 December 2017, followed by the second part on 6 April 2018. In April 2018, Netflix renewed the series with a significantly increased budget for 16 new episodes total. Part 3, with eight episodes, was released on 19 July 2019. Part 4, also with eight episodes, was released on 3 April 2020. A documentary involving the producers and the cast premiered on Netflix the same day, titled Money Heist: The Phenomenon.
The first season revolves around a long-prepared, multi-day assault on the Royal Mint of Spain in Madrid, in which a group of robbers take hostages as part of their plan to print and escape with €2.4 billion. It involves eight robbers, code-named after cities and led by the Professor (Álvaro Morte) from an external location. The story is primarily focused on one of the robbers, Tokyo (Úrsula Corberó), as they battle with hostages on the inside and the police on the outside. In the second season, the surviving robbers are forced out of hiding, and with the help of new members, they plan and perform an assault on the Bank of Spain.
The series was filmed in Madrid, Spain. Significant portions of part 3 were also filmed in Panama, Thailand and Florence, Italy. The narrative is told in a real-time-like fashion and relies on flashbacks, time-jumps, hidden character motivations and an unreliable narrator for complexity. The series subverts the heist genre by being told from the perspective of a woman (Tokyo) and having a strong Spanish identity, where emotional dynamics offset the perfect strategic crime.
The series received 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,[4] with a particular resonance coming from viewers from Mediterranean Europe and the Latin world.
Production[edit]
Conception and writing[edit]
"We wanted to make a very small project in a simple way; we wanted to cross lines we couldn't cross in previous projects, in terms of narrative and structure without any intermediaries."
—Writer Esther Martinez Lobato, October 2018[5]
The series was conceived by screenwriter Álex Pina and director Jesús Colmenar during their years of collaboration since 2008.[6] After finishing their work on the Spanish prison drama Vis a vis (Locked Up), they left Globomedia to set up their own production company, named Vancouver Media, in 2016.[6][7] For their first project, they considered either filming a comedy or developing a heist story for television,[6] with the latter having never been attempted before on Spanish television.[8] Along with former Locked Up colleagues,[b] they developed Money Heist as a passion project to try new things without outside interference.[5] Pina was firm about making it a limited series, feeling that dilution had become a problem for his previous productions.[9]
Initially entitled Los Desahuciados (The Evicted) in the conception phase,[9] the series was developed to subvert heist conventions and combine elements of the action genre, thrillers and surrealism, while still being credible.[6] Pina saw an advantage over typical heist films in that character development could span a considerably longer narrative arc.[10] Characters were to be shown from multiple sides to break the viewers' preconceptions of villainy and retain their interest throughout the show.[10] Key aspects of the planned storyline were written down at the beginning,[11] while the finer story beats were developed incrementally to not overwhelm the writers.[12] Writer Javier Gómez Santander compared the writing process to the Professor's way of thinking, "going around, writing down options, consulting engineers whom you cannot tell why you ask them that", but noted that fiction allowed the police to be written dumber when necessary.[12]
The beginning of filming was set for January 2017,[8] allowing for five months of pre-production.[13] The narrative was split into two parts for financial considerations.[13] The robbers' city-based code names, which Spanish newspaper ABC compared to the colour-based code names in Quentin Tarantino's 1992 heist film Reservoir Dogs,[14] were chosen at random in the first part,[15] although places with high viewership resonance were also taken into account for the new robbers' code names in part 3.[16] The first five lines of the pilot script took a month to write,[13] as the writers were unable to make the Professor or Moscow work as narrator.[9] Tokyo as an unreliable narrator, flashbacks and time-jumps increased the narrative complexity,[10] but also made the story more fluid for the audience.[13] The pilot episode required over 50 script versions until the producers were satisfied.[17][18] Later scripts would be finished once per week to keep up with filming.[13]
Casting[edit]
Casting took place late in 2016, spanning more than two months.[19] The characters were not fully fleshed out at the beginning of this process, and took shape based on the actors' performance.[20] Casting directors Eva Leira and Yolanda Serrano were looking for actors with the ability to play empathetic robbers with believable love and family connections.[21] Antena 3 announced the ensemble cast in March 2017[3] and released audition excerpts of most cast actors in the series' aftershow Tercer Grado and on their website.[20]
The Professor was designed as a charismatic yet shy villain who could convince the robbers to follow him and make the audience sympathetic to the robbers' resistance against the powerful banks.[22] However, developing the Professor's role proved difficult, as the character did not follow archetypal conventions[19] and the producers were uncertain about his degree of brilliance.[9] While the producers found his Salva personality early on,[9] they were originally looking for a 50-year-old Harvard professor type with the looks of Spanish actor José Coronado.[23][9] The role was proposed to Javier Gutiérrez, but he was already committed to starring in the film Campeones.[24] Meanwhile, the casting directors advocated for Álvaro Morte, whom they knew from their collaboration on the long-running Spanish soap opera El secreto de Puente Viejo, even though his prime time television experience was limited at that point.[23] Going through the full casting process and approaching the role through external analysis rather than personal experience, Morte described the professor as "a tremendous box of surprises" that "end up shaping this character because he never ceases to generate uncertainty", making it unclear for the audience if the character is good or bad.[19] The producers also found that his appearance of a primary school teacher gave the character more credibility.[9]
Pedro Alonso was cast to play Berlin, whom La Voz de Galicia would later characterize as a "cold, hypnotic, sophisticated and disturbing character, an inveterate macho with serious empathy problems, a white-collar thief who despises his colleagues and considers them inferior."[25] The actor's portrayal of the character was inspired by a chance encounter Alonso had the day before receiving his audition script, with "an intelligent person" who was "provocative or even manipulative" to him.[26] Alonso saw high observation skills and an unusual understanding of his surroundings in Berlin, resulting in unconventional and unpredictable character behaviour.[25] Similarities between Berlin and Najwa Nimri's character Zulema in Pina's TV series Locked Up were unintentional.[27] The family connections between the Professor and Berlin were not in the original script, but were built into the characters' backstory at the end of part 1 after Morte and Alonso had repeatedly proposed to do so.[28]
The producers found the protagonist and narrator, Tokyo, among the hardest characters to develop,[13] as they were originally looking for an older actress to play the character who had nothing to lose before meeting the Professor.[20] Úrsula Corberó eventually landed the role for bringing a playful energy to the table; her voice was heavily factored in during casting, as she was the first voice the audience hears in the show.[20] Jaime Lorente developed Denver's hallmark laughter during the casting process.[20] Two cast actors had appeared in previous TV series by Álex Pina: Paco Tous (Moscow) had starred in the 2005 TV series Los hombres de Paco, and Alba Flores (Nairobi) had starred starred in Locked Up. Flores was asked to play Nairobi without audition when Pina realized late in the conception phase that the show needed another female gang member.[9] For the role opposite to the robbers, Itziar Ituño was cast to play Inspector Raquel Murillo, whom Ituño described as a "strong and powerful woman in a world of men, but also sensitive in her private life".[29] She took inspiration from The Silence of the Lambs character Clarice Starling, an FBI student with a messy family life who develops sympathies for a criminal.[30]
The actors learned of the show's renewal by Netflix before the producers contacted them to return.[31] In October 2018, Netflix announced the cast of part 3; the returning main cast included Pedro Alonso, raising speculation about his role in part 3.[32] Among the new cast members were Argentine actor Rodrigo de la Serna, who saw a possible connection between his character's name and the Argentine football legend Martín Palermo,[33] and Locked Up star Najwa Nimri. Cameo scenes of Brazilian football star, and fan of the series, Neymar, as a monk were filmed for part 3, but were excluded from the stream without repercussions to the narrative until judicial charges against him had been dropped in late August 2019.[34][12] A small appearance by Spanish actress Belén Cuesta in two episodes of part 3 raised fan and media speculation about her role in part 4.[35]
Design[edit]
The show's look and atmosphere were developed by creator Álex Pina, director Jesús Colmenar, and director of photography Migue Amoedo, according to La Vanguardia "the most prolific television trio in recent years".[36] Abdón Alcañiz served as art director.[37] Their collaboration projects usually take a primary colour as a basis;[37] Money Heist had red as "one of the distinguishing features of the series"[38] that stood over the gray sets.[39] Blue, green and yellow were marked as a forbidden colour in production design.[39] To achieve "absolute film quality", red tones were tested with different types of fabrics, textures and lighting.[40] The iconography of the robbers' red jumpsuits mirrored the yellow prison dress code in Locked Up.[38] For part 3, the Italian retail clothing company Diesel modified the red jumpsuits to better fit the body and launched a clothing line inspired by the series.[39] Salvador Dalí was chosen as the robbers' mask design because of Dalí's recognisable visage that also serves as an iconic cultural reference to Spain; Don Quixote as an alternative mask design was discarded.[41] This choice sparked criticism by the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation for not requesting the necessary permissions.[21]
To make the plot more realistic, the producers requested and received advice from the national police and the Spanish Ministry of Interior.[42][43] The robbers' banknotes were printed with permission of the Bank of Spain and had an increased size as an anti-counterfeit measure.[42] The greater financial backing of Netflix for part 3 allowed for the build of over 50 sets across five basic filming locations world-wide.[44] Preparing a remote and uninhabited island in Panama to represent a robber hide-out proved difficult, as it needed to be cleaned, secured and built on, and involved hours-long travelling with material transportation.[40] The real Bank of Spain was unavailable for visiting and filming for security reasons, so the producers recreated the Bank on a two-level stage by their own imagining, taking inspiration from Spanish architecture of the Francisco Franco era.[40] Publicly available information was used to make the Bank's main hall set similar to the real location. The other interior sets were inspired by different periods and artificially aged to accentuate the building's history.[44] Bronze and granite sculptures and motifs from the Valle de los Caídos were recreated for the interior,[40] and over 50 paintings were painted for the Bank to emulate the Ateneo de Madrid.[44]
Filming[edit]
Parts 1 and 2 were filmed back-to-back in the greater Madrid region from January until August 2017.[19][45][17] The pilot episode was recorded in 26 days,[42] while all other episodes had around 14 filming days.[10] Production was split into two units to save time, with one unit shooting scenes involving the Professor and the police, and the other filming scenes with the robbers.[13] The main storyline is set in the Royal Mint of Spain in Madrid, but the exterior scenes were filmed at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) headquarters for its passing resemblance to the Mint,[42] and on the roof of the Higher Technical School of Aeronautical Engineers, part of the Technical University of Madrid.[45] The hunting estate where the robbers plan their coup was filmed at the Finca El Gasco farm estate in Torrelodones.[45] Interior filming took place at the former Locked Up sets in Colmenar Viejo[7] and at the Spanish national daily newspaper ABC in Torrejón de Ardoz for printing press scenes.[17] As the show was designed as a limited series, all sets were destroyed once production of part 2 had finished.[13]
Parts 3 and 4 were also filmed back-to-back,[46] with 21 to 23 filming days per episode.[10] Netflix announced the start of filming on 25 October 2018,[22] and filming of part 4 ended in August 2019.[47] In 2018, Netflix had opened their first European production hub in Tres Cantos near Madrid for new and existing Netflix productions;[48] main filming moved there onto a set three times the size of the set used for parts 1 and 2.[49] The main storyline is set in the Bank of Spain in Madrid, but the exterior was filmed at the Ministry of Development complex Nuevos Ministerios.[49] A scene where money is dropped from the sky was filmed at Callao Square.[45] Ermita de San Frutos in Carrascal del Río served as the exterior of the Italian monastery where the robbers plan the heist.[39] The motorhome scenes of the Professor and Lisboa were filmed at the deserted Las Salinas beaches in Almería to make the audience feel that the characters are safe from the police although their exact location is undisclosed at first.[50] Underwater scenes inside the vault were filmed at Pinewood Studios in the United Kingdom.[51][16] The beginning of part 3 was also filmed in Thailand, on the Guna Yala islands in Panama, and in Florence, Italy,[40] which helped to counter the claustrophobic feeling of the first two parts,[10] but was also an expression of the plot's global repercussions.[52]
Music[edit]
The series' theme song, "My Life Is Going On", was composed by Manel Santisteban, who also served as composer on Locked Up. Santisteban approached Spanish singer Cecilia Krull to write and perform the lyrics, which are about having confidence in one's abilities and the future.[53] The theme song is played behind a title sequence featuring paper models of major settings from the series.[53] Krull's main source of inspiration was the character Tokyo in the first episode of the series, when the Professor offers her a way out of a desperate moment.[54] The lyrics are in English as the language that came naturally to Krull at the time of writing.[54]
The Italian anti-fascist song "Bella ciao" plays multiple times throughout the series and accompanies two emblematic key scenes: At the end of the first part the Professor and Berlin sing it in preparation for the heist, embracing themselves as resistance against the establishment,[55] and in the second part it plays during the thieves' escape from the Mint, as a metaphor for freedom.[56] Regarding the use of the song, Tokyo recounts in one of her narrations, "The life of the Professor revolved around a single idea: Resistance. His grandfather, who had fought against the fascists in Italy, taught him the song and he taught us."[56] The song was brought to the show by writer Javier Gómez Santander. He had listened to "Bella ciao" at home to cheer him up, as he had grown frustrated for not finding a suitable song for the middle of part 1.[12] He was aware of the song's meaning and history and felt it represented positive values.[12] "Bella ciao" became a summer hit in Europe in 2018, mostly due to the popularity of the series and not the song's grave themes.[55]
Cast and characters[edit]
Main[edit]
- Úrsula Corberó as Silene Oliveira (Tokyo): the narrator; she was a runaway robber until scouted by the Professor to participate in his plan.
- Álvaro Morte as Sergio Marquina (The Professor / Salvador "Salva" Martín): the mastermind of the heist who assembled the group, and Berlin's brother.
- Itziar Ituño as Raquel Murillo (Lisbon): an inspector of the National Police Corps who is put in charge of the case until she joins the group in part 3.
- Pedro Alonso as Andrés de Fonollosa (Berlin): a terminally ill jewel thief and the Professor's second-in-command and brother.
- Alba Flores as Ágata Jiménez (Nairobi) (part 1–4): an expert in forgery in charge of printing the money for the group.
- Miguel Herrán as Aníbal Cortés (Rio): a young hacker and Tokyo's boyfriend.
- Paco Tous as Agustín Ramos (Moscow) (part 1–2; featured part 3–4): a former miner turned criminal and Denver's father.
- Jaime Lorente as Daniel / Ricardo[c] Ramos (Denver): Moscow's son who joins him in the heist.
- Esther Acebo as Mónica Gaztambide (Stockholm): one of the hostages who is Arturo Román's secretary and mistress, carrying his child out of wedlock. During the robbery, she falls in love with Denver and becomes an accomplice to the group.
- Kiti Mánver as Mariví Fuentes (part 1–2; featured part 3–4): Raquel's mother.
- Enrique Arce as Arturo Román: a hostage and the Director of the Royal Mint of Spain.
- Darko Perić as Mirko Dragic (Helsinki): a veteran Serbian soldier and Oslo's cousin.
- María Pedraza as Alison Parker (part 1–2): a hostage and daughter of the British ambassador to Spain.
- Hovik Keuchkerian as Bogotá (part 3–4): an expert in metallurgy who joins the robbery of the Bank of Spain.
- Rodrigo de la Serna as Martín Berrote (Palermo / The Engineer) (part 3–4): an Argentine old friend of Berlin's who planned the robbery of the Bank of Spain with him and assumes his place as commanding officer.
- Najwa Nimri as Alicia Sierra (part 3–4): a pregnant inspector of the National Police Corps put in charge of the case after Raquel's departure from the force.
- Luka Peroš as Marseille (part 4; featured part 3): a member of the gang who joins the robbery of the Bank of Spain.
- Belén Cuesta as Julia (Manila) (part 4; featured part 3): godchild of Moscow and Denver's childhood friend. She is a trans woman who joins the gang and poses as one of the hostage during the robbery of the Bank of Spain.
- Fernando Cayo as Colonel Luis Tamayo (part 4; featured part 3): a member of the Spanish Intelligence who oversees Alicia's work on the case.
Recurring[edit]
- Roberto Garcia Ruiz as Dimitri Mostovói / Radko Dragić[d] (Oslo) (part 1–2; featured part 3–4): a veteran Serbian soldier and Helsinki's cousin.
- Fernando Soto as Ángel Rubio (part 1–2; featured part 3–4): a deputy inspector and Raquel's second-in-command.
- Juan Fernández as Colonel Luis Prieto (part 1–2; featured part 3–4): a member of the Spanish Intelligence who oversees Raquel's work on the case.
- Anna Gras as Mercedes Colmenar (part 1–2): Alison's teacher and one of the hostages.
- Fran Morcillo as Pablo Ruiz (part 1): Alison's schoolmate and one of the hostages.
- Clara Alvarado as Ariadna Cascales (part 1–2): one of the hostages who works in the Mint.
- Mario de la Rosa as Suárez: the chief of the Grupo Especial de Operaciones.
- Miquel García Borda as Alberto Vicuña (part 1–2; featured part 4): Raquel's ex-husband and a forensic examiner.
- Naia Guz as Paula Vicuña Murillo: Raquel and Alberto's daughter.
- José Manuel Poga as César Gandía (part 4; featured part 3): chief of security for the Bank of Spain who escapes from hostage and causes havoc for the group.
- Antonio Romero as Benito Antoñanzas (part 3–4): an assistant to Colonel Luis Tamayo who is persuaded by the Professor to do tasks for him.
- Pep Munné as Governor of the Bank of Spain (featured part 3–4).
- Olalla Hernández as Amanda (featured part 3–4): a hostage that Arturo rapes.
- Mari Carmen Sánchez as Paquita (featured part 3–4): a hostage and a nurse who tends to Nairobi while she recovers.
- Carlos Suárez as Miguel Fernández (featured part 3–4): a nervous hostage.
- Ramón Agirre as Benjamín (featured part 4): father of Manila who aids the Professor in his plan.
- Ahikar Azcona as Matías Caño (featured part 3–4): a member of the group who largely guards the hostages.
- Antonio García Ferreras as himself (featured part 4): journalist.
Episodes[edit]
| Season[a] | Part[a] | Episodes | Originally released | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| First released | Last released | Network | |||||
| 1 | 1 | 15[e] | 9 | 2 May 2017 | 27 June 2017 | Antena 3 | |
| 2 | 6 | 16 October 2017 | 23 November 2017 | ||||
| 2 | 3 | 16 | 8 | 19 July 2019 | Netflix | ||
| 4 | 8 | 3 April 2020 | |||||
Season 1: Parts 1 and 2 (2017)[edit]
Part 1 begins with the aftermath of a failed bank robbery by a woman named "Tokyo", as a man named the "Professor" saves her from being caught by the police and proposes her a heist of drastic proportions. After a brief outline of the planned heist, the story jumps to the beginning of a multi-day assault on the Royal Mint of Spain in Madrid. The eight robbers are code-named after cities: Tokyo, Moscow, Berlin, Nairobi, Rio, Denver, Helsinki and Oslo. Dressed in red jumpsuits with a mask of the Spanish painter Salvador Dalí, the group of robbers take 67 hostages as part of their plan to print and escape with €2.4 billion through a self-built escape tunnel. The Professor heads the heist from an external location. Flashbacks throughout the series show the five months of preparation in an abandoned hunting estate in the Toledo countryside; the robbers are not to share personal information nor engage in personal relationships, and the assault shall be without bloodshed.
Throughout parts 1 and 2, the robbers inside the Mint have difficulties sticking to the pre-defined rules, and face uncooperative hostages, violence, isolation, and mutiny. Tokyo commentates the events through voice-overs. While Denver pursues a love affair with the hostage Mónica Gaztambide, inspector Raquel Murillo of the National Police Corps negotiates with the Professor on the outside and begins an intimate relationship with his alter ego "Salva". The Professor's identity is repeatedly close to being uncovered, until Raquel realises his true identity, but is emotionally unable and unwilling to hand him over to the police. At the end of part 2, after 128 hours, the robbers escape successfully from the Mint with €984 million printed, but at the cost of the lives of Oslo, Moscow and Berlin. One year after the heist, Raquel decodes postcards left by the Professor for a location in Palawan in the Philippines, where she reunites with him.
Season 2: Parts 3 and 4 (2019–20)[edit]
Part 3 begins two to three years after the heist on the Royal Mint of Spain, showing the robbers enjoying their lives paired-up in diverse locations. However, when Europol captures Rio with an intercepted phone, the Professor picks up Berlin's old plans to assault the Bank of Spain to force Europol to hand over Rio to prevent his torture. He and Raquel (going by "Lisbon") get the gang, including Mónica (going by "Stockholm"), back together and enlist three new members: Bogotá, Palermo and Marseille, with Palermo in charge. Flashbacks to the Professor and Berlin outline the planned new heist and their different approaches to love. The disguised robbers sneak into the heavily guarded bank, take hostages and eventually gain access to the gold and state secrets, while the Professor and Lisbon travel in an RV and then an ambulance while communicating with the robbers and the police. A breach in the bank is thwarted, forcing the police, led by Colonel Luis Tamayo and pregnant inspector Alicia Sierra, to release Rio to the robbers. Nairobi gets gravely injured by a police-inflicted sniper shot in the chest, and Lisbon is caught by the police. With another police assault on the bank incoming, and believing Lisbon to have been executed by the police, the Professor radios Palermo and declares DEFCON 2 on the police. Part 3 concludes by showing Lisbon alive and in custody, and Tokyo narrating that the Professor had fallen for his own trap and that "the war had begun."
Part 4 begins with the robbers rushing to save Nairobi's life. While Tokyo stages a coup d'état and takes over command from Palermo, the Professor and Marseille deduce that Lisbon must still be alive and being interrogated by Sierra in a tent outside of the bank. They persuade Tamayo's assistant, Antoñanzas, to help them, and the Professor is able to establish a 48-hour truce with the police. As the group manage to save Nairobi's life, the restrained Palermo creates chaos to reestablish his command by colluding with Gandía, the restrained chief of security for the Bank of Spain. Gandía escapes, begins communications with the police from within a panic room inside the bank, and participates in a violent cat-and-mouse game with the gang. Palermo is able to regain the trust of the gang and rejoins them. Gandía shoots Nairobi in the head, killing her instantly, but the gang later recapture him. Uses him as bait to bring an helicopter to the Bank of Spain with Lisbon in it. As the police prepare another assault on the bank, the Professor exposes the unlawful torture of Rio and holding of Lisbon to the public. Due to this revelation, Sierra is fired and begins a pursuit of the Professor on her own. The Professor enlists external help to free Lisbon after she is transferred to the Supreme Court. Part 4 concludes with Lisbon rejoining the gang within the bank, and with Sierra finding the Professor's hideout, holding him at gunpoint. Now,we all sit and wait for season 5. Hoping it doesn't take too long, because we're on our heels and edge or our sits.
Themes and analysis[edit]
The series was noted for its subversions of the heist genre. While heist films are usually told with a rational male Anglo-centric focus, the series reframes the heist story by giving it a strong Spanish identity and telling it from a female perspective through Tokyo.[64] The producers regarded the cultural identity as an important part of the personality of the series, as it made the story more relatable for viewers.[16] They also avoided adapting the series to international tastes,[16] which helped to set it apart from the usual American TV series[65] and raised international awareness of Spanish sensibilities.[16] Emotional dynamics like the passion and impulsivity of friendship and love offset the perfect strategic crime for increased tension.[64][46] Nearly all main characters, including the relationship-opposing Professor, eventually succumb to love,[52] for which the series received comparisons to telenovelas.[4][66] Comedic elements, which were compared to Back to the Future[19] and black comedy,[49] also offset the heist tension.[67] The heist film formula is subverted by the heist starting straight after the opening credits instead of lingering on how the gang is brought together.[2]
With the series being set after the financial crisis of 2007–2008, which resulted in severe austerity measures in Spain,[66] critics argued that the series was an explicit allegory of rebellion against capitalism,[4][68] including The Globe and Mail, who saw the series as "subversive in that it's about a heist for the people. It's revenge against a government."[66] According to Le Monde, the Professor's teaching scenes in the Toledo hunting estate in particular highlighted how people should seek to develop their own solutions for the fallible capitalist system.[68] The show's Robin Hood analogy of robbing the rich and giving to the poor received various interpretations. El Español argued that the analogy made it easier for viewers to connect with the show, as modern society tended to be tired of banks and politics already,[65] and The New Statesman said the rich were no longer stolen from but undermined at their roots.[4] On the other hand, Esquire's Mireia Mullor saw the Robin Hood analogy as a mere distraction strategy for the robbers, as they initially did not plan to use the money from their first heist to improve the quality of life of regular people; for this reason, Mullor also argues that the large following for the robbers in part 3 was not comprehensible even though they represented a channel for the discontent of those bearing economic and political injustices.[69]
The characters were designed as multi-dimensional and complementary antagonists and anti-heroes whose moralities are ever-changing.[13] Examples include Berlin, who shifts from a robber mistreating hostages, to one of the series' most beloved characters.[13] There is also the hostage Mónica Gaztambide, as well as inspector Raquel Murillo, who eventually join the cause of the robbers.[13] Gonzálvez of The Huffington Post finds that an audience may think of the robbers as evil at first for committing a crime, but as the series progresses it marks the financial system as the true evil and suggests the robbers have ethical and empathetic justification for stealing from an overpowered thief.[70] Najwa Nimri, playing inspector Sierra in part 3, said that "the complex thing about a villain is giving him humanity. That's where everyone gets alarmed, when you have to prove that a villain also has a heart". She added that the amount of information and technology that surrounds us is allowing us to verify that "everyone has a dark side."[70] The series leaves it to the audience to decide who is good or bad, as characters are "relatable and immoral" at various points in the story.[13] Pina argued that it was this ability to change view that made the series addictive and marked its success
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