Money Heist Season 1
Money Heist (Spanish: La casa de papel, [la ˈkasa ðe paˈpel], lit. ’The House of Paper’) is a Spanish heist crime drama television series created by Álex Pina. The series traces two long-prepared heists led by the Professor (Álvaro Morte), one on the Royal Mint of Spain, and one on the Bank of Spain, told from the perspective of one of the robbers, Tokyo (Úrsula Corberó). 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 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 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 (Spanish: La casa de papel: El Fenómeno). In July 2020, Netflix renewed the show for a fifth and final part, which was released in two five-episode volumes on 3 September and 3 December 2021, respectively.
Similar to Money Heist: The Phenomenon, a two-part documentary involving the producers and cast premiered on Netflix the same day, titled Money Heist: From Tokyo to Berlin. The series was filmed in Madrid, Spain. Significant portions were also filmed in Panama, Thailand, Italy (Florence), Denmark and in Portugal (Lisbon). A South Korean remake set in an alternate universe, Money Heist: Korea – Joint Economic Area, was released on 24 June 2022, while a direct spin-off, Berlin, with Pedro Alonso reprising his role, is in active development, forming a shared universe.
The series received several awards including the International Emmy Award for Best Drama Series at the 46th International Emmy Awards, 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 Season 1
STORY
Episodes 01
“Efectuar lo acordado”
“Do as Planned”
In the aftermath of a failed bank robbery by a woman named “Tokyo,” a man called “the Professor” saves her from being caught by the police and proposes a heist of drastic proportions. After a brief outline of the planned heist, the Professor artfully guides a group of robbers: Tokyo, Rio, Berlin, Nairobi, Denver, Moscow, Oslo, and Helsinki to invade the Royal Mint of Spain in red jumpsuits and Salvador Dalí masks and take hold of 67 hostages, as part of their plan to print and escape with €2.4 billion. The police investigator Raquel Murillo is put in charge of the case, but she is unaware that the mastermind behind the heist is closer than she could ever have imagined.
Episodes 02
“Imprudencias letales”
“Lethal Negligence”
The robbers begin to print the money while Arturo Román, one of the hostages, starts making escape plans, assisted by his secretary and mistress Mónica Gaztambide, who is pregnant with his child. She is caught with a concealed cell phone and Berlin orders Denver to kill her. Meanwhile, Rio makes a mistake that leads to his and Tokyo’s identities being discovered by the police.
Episodes 03
“Errar al disparar”
“Misfire”
Believing that Denver executed Mónica under Berlin’s orders, Moscow, Denver’s father, is devastated and attempts to turn himself in but is dissuaded by his son. In the meantime, Raquel’s relationship with her new friend Salva becomes more intimate, totally oblivious to the fact that it is a pseudonym assumed by the Professor.
Episodes 04
“Caballo de Troya”
“Trojan Horse”
Raquel sends her police partner Ángel Rubio into the Mint undercover with a medical team that is allowed to treat Arturo, who was mistakenly shot by the police. However, the Professor sees through her move and inserts a bug in Ángel’s glasses.
Episodes 05
“El día de la marmota”
“Groundhog Day”
The Professor runs ahead of the police to get rid of an important piece of evidence that can endanger his plans, their fingerprints in a car at a scrap yard that Helsinki neglected to destroy. Meanwhile, Denver treats Mónica in a secret location after he shot her leg to fake her execution, and they end up becoming closer.
Episodes 06
“La cálida Guerra Fría”
“The Hot Cold War”
As the Professor rushes out of the scrap yard, a man sees him. The Professor threatens to kill the man’s family if the facial composite of his description looks like him. Berlin discovers that Denver did not kill Mónica as ordered and believing that his identity was exposed because of him, comes close to executing him for his disobedience.
Episodes 07
“Refrigerada inestabilidad”
“Cool Instability”
The robbers initiate a plan to use the hostages to stall the police and gain more time, but Raquel takes the chance to reveal a secret that Berlin has kept from the others—he only has a few months left to live due to a terminal illness. She also makes an attempt to convince Rio to surrender.
Episodes 08
“Tú lo has buscado”
“You Asked for It”
Raquel loses her trust in Ángel, who is unaware of the bug the robbers planted in his glasses. Arturo prepares another plan to escape, but becomes devastated upon discovering Mónica and Denver’s affair. Ángel, who is taken off the case, is in a coma after a car accident while drunk. He had discovered the Professor’s identity through fingerprints taken from his cider factory, a front for his hideout.
Episodes 09
“El que la sigue la consigue”
“Whoever Keeps Trying It, Gets It”
Thanks to Arturo’s plan, 17 hostages manage to escape, seriously injuring Oslo in the process. Before his car accident, Ángel had left a voice message on Raquel’s landline explaining that Salva was the one behind the heist. Raquel’s mother, who has Alzheimer’s disease, listens to Ángel’s message, writes it down, and tries calling Raquel’s phone. When Raquel does not answer, she calls Salva for him to pass along the message. The Professor believes he has no choice but to kill Raquel’s mother. He goes to her home and poisons her coffee, but cannot go through with it and knocks the cup out of her hand. When she thinks it was her fault, he realizes that she has Alzheimer’s disease and simply deletes the message and takes her note. Later, Raquel brings Salva along to Toledo and finds the robbers’ villa, where they planned the heist.
CAST
- Úrsula Corberó as Silene Oliveira (Tokyo): a runaway turned robber who is scouted by the Professor, then joins his group and participates in his plans. She also acts as the unreliable narrator.
- Álvaro Morte as Sergio Marquina (The Professor) / Salvador “Salva” Martín: the mastermind of the heist who assembled the group, and Berlin’s younger brother
- Itziar Ituño as Raquel Murillo (Lisbon): an inspector of the National Police Corps who is put in charge of the case
- Pedro Alonso as Andrés de Fonollosa (Berlin): a terminally ill jewel thief and the Professor’s second-in-command and older brother
- Paco Tous as Agustín Ramos (Moscow) (parts 1–2; featured parts 3–5): a former miner turned criminal and Denver’s father
- Alba Flores as Ágata Jiménez (Nairobi): an expert in counterfeiting and forgery, in charge of printing the money and oversaw the melting of gold
- Miguel Herrán as Aníbal Cortés (Rio): a young hacker who later becomes Tokyo’s boyfriend
- Jaime Lorente as Ricardo / Daniel Ramos (Denver): Moscow’s son who joins him in the heist
- Esther Acebo as Mónica Gaztambide (Stockholm): one of the hostages in the Mint 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
- Enrique Arce as Arturo Román: a hostage and the former Director of the Royal Mint of Spain
- María Pedraza as Alison Parker (parts 1–2): a hostage in the Mint and daughter of the British ambassador to Spain
- Darko Perić as Mirko Dragic (Helsinki): a Serbian army veteran and Oslo’s cousin
- Kiti Mánver as Mariví Fuentes (parts 1–2; featured parts 3–4): Raquel’s mother
PRODUCTION
The series was conceived by screenwriter Álex Pina and director Jesús Colmenar during their years of collaboration since 2008. After finishing their work on the Spanish prison drama Locked Up (Vis a vis), they left Globomedia to set up their own production company, named Vancouver Media, in 2016. For their first project, they considered either filming a comedy or developing a heist story for television, with the latter having never been attempted before on Spanish television. Along with former Locked Up colleagues, they developed Money Heist as a passion project to try new things without outside interference. Pina was firm about making it a limited series, feeling that dilution had become a problem for his previous productions.
Initially entitled Los Desahuciados (The Evicted) in the conception phase, the series was developed to subvert heist conventions and combine elements of the action genre, thrillers and surrealism, while still being credible. Pina saw an advantage over typical heist films in that character development could span a considerably longer narrative arc. Characters were to be shown from multiple sides to break the viewers’ preconceptions of villainy and retain their interest throughout the show. Key aspects of the planned storyline were written down at the beginning, while the finer story beats were developed incrementally to not overwhelm the writers. 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.
The beginning of filming was set for January 2017, allowing for five months of pre-production. The narrative was split into two parts for financial considerations. 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, were chosen at random in the first part, although places with high viewership resonance were also taken into account for the new robbers’ code names in part 3. The first five lines of the pilot script took a month to write, as the writers were unable to make the Professor or Moscow work as narrator. Ultimately, Tokyo was chosen as an unreliable narrator. Flashbacks and time-jumps increased the narrative complexity and made the story more fluid for the audience. The pilot episode required over 50 script versions until the producers were satisfied. Later scripts would be finished once per week to keep up with filming.
RELEASE
2 May 2017
