Money Heist: Do as Planned First Watch

May 2, 2020 6:51 PM - Season 1, Episode 1

n 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 her 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 remains completely unaware that the mastermind behind the heist is sidling towards her and getting closer than she could ever have imagined.
posted by Carillon (15 comments total)

So is this show good? I see it constantly popping up on Netflix, but I just can't get past the name.
posted by Literaryhero at 9:15 PM on May 2, 2020

That's a good question. I'm off a few minds on it. I definitely really enjoy parts, the plan and execution are generally quite good. The problem is there's extensive narration which can be off-putting, and the plot itself can be a bit melodramatic.
posted by Carillon at 9:50 PM on May 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

So is this show good? I see it constantly popping up on Netflix, but I just can't get past the name.

The Spanish title is ‘House of Paper’, which is much better.

Is it good? I enjoyed it. It’s basically an action soap opera with egregiously attractive people.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 10:25 PM on May 2, 2020 [6 favorites]

'House of Paper’

And I wonder why they translated that to Money Heist, which I assumed was just a direct translation (or thought that perhaps the Spanish show had an English name that sounded slightly off to first language English speakers). Anyway, sorry for derailing. I will try an episode or two and see what I think. :)

OK, I am not done yet, apparently. Isn't 'House of Paper' a perfectly nice name for a TV show? I mean it sounds cool and intriguing and slightly mysterious. Ugh, I really don't know why I am so hung up on this, but it has been bothering me for ages. I think I need to go outside and breathe...oh.
posted by Literaryhero at 3:56 AM on May 3, 2020

Sounds too much like "House of Cards", no? (Also, my own cause for deep breaths is the tendency for repetitive name templates: "House of Leaves|Cards|Paper|Wax|Sand|Lies|Fools|Fears|Z|D|9|...", "The Good Wife|Doctor|Fight|Liar|Lie|Guy|Spy|German|Neighbor|Nanny|Cop|Place|Dinosaur|...")

I think "Money Heist" is pretty much hilarious.
posted by trig at 4:53 AM on May 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

There's probably a direct connection between how much portentous voiceover you can stand and how much you like the show. I'm an "only Nicholas Cage or Kristin Bell" voiceover person, so I think this show is rough going. (There's also a lot of plotting that relies on public sympathy resting with thieves...which...hmm, I don't know. Possibly I've spent too much of my life around archconservatives; it doesn't work for me.)

People who like it really like it, so you might as well give it a try.
posted by grandiloquiet at 9:31 AM on May 3, 2020 [1 favorite]

I also liked at least the first season a lot, it's exciting and not too serious.

Part of the draw is the Spanish setting. Different from the usual UK/US/Scandi fare. Apart from a few Almodovar films I haven't seen much from Spain and as a bonus you get to practice the language - for whenever we're allowed to go on vacation there again.

Didn't notice a voiceover so YMMV I guess!
posted by kwartel at 9:41 AM on May 3, 2020

First of all, the name "Money Heist" is amazing, and completely sold me on the show before I knew anything about it. It is so stupid it's clever.

It is not high art, but we find it very entertaining. It is indeed an action soap opera with lots of melodrama and plenty of flashbacks to the Professor's Seldonesque psychoheistory where we see him plan for exactly the crazy development that has just come up, but everything about it is better than it needs to be: the twists are interesting, the acting is good, the characters are actually well-drawn, and they act in a way that make sense. My main criticism is that it's pretty drawn-out (you could tell pretty much the same story in half the time), but hey, more time watching the show.
posted by dfan at 9:41 AM on May 3, 2020 [2 favorites]

There’s a featurette that came out with the latest season which explains some of the soap-opera-y nature of the show. Basically, none of the seasons are completely written before they start filming; the outline of the heist is mapped out from the start, but a good amount of the actual scripting is done day by day as they shoot.
posted by a box and a stick and a string and a bear at 12:11 PM on May 3, 2020

House of Paper: It takes place in a Mint! Later episodes have more commentary on the financial system as a whole so... it has double meaning! All of which was lost with the English translation, boo.

Things I love:
the female perspective (although I would not call it a feminist work, per se)
Spanish culture
The Professor
the twistiness, omg the twistiness is delightful; I am admittedly not great at guessing twists but these were more often surprising to me, which I attribute to its origination in Spanish culture.
I was hate-watching for some of the run because I had English dubbing on and the English subtitles DO NOT MATCH which made for some interesting comparisons. I don't remember which was which now but one was obviously a much more literal translation from Spanish and one had been more Anglicized. I did like the vocal performances in Spanish better (obvs).

I didn't mind Tokyo's voiceover but I'm cool with v/o-heavy properties. I agree your tolerance for that would have a big effect on your enjoyment.
posted by emkelley at 12:35 PM on May 4, 2020

I'll have to check this out. I admit, the name "Money Heist" sounds a bit like "Police Squad" or "Team America," so I was expecting a parody of a heist movie.
posted by SPrintF at 11:48 AM on September 5, 2021

We have been enjoying this too. The show's structure subverts all the standard rules of what how a show about a Hiest should be structured: how long it should be, how the action sequences should take place, which characters should be developed, and so on. There appear to be A and B production teams working on it: the former producing some really well shot and edited scenes of action and tension. The latter padding some episodes with some flourishes of melodramatic Spanish soap opera. If somebody gets hurt or falls in love or gets into an argument - then we are going to hear about it at great length!
posted by rongorongo at 10:36 AM on October 8, 2021

I am HOOKED on this show. If you love a cat-and-mouse chase, if you love a good caper, if you love character-driven stories . . . and so much more all in one show. Yes, it is quite drawn out, but it's so compelling and you end up rooting for the thieves and the law at the same time (at least I did!). And there are so mant twists and turns with just enough predicatability to not be predictable and I found myself always wanting to see what happened next.

For me it's that the thieves are not killers, so there is a constant threat of them crossing that boundary as they continue to gain then lose the upper hand and you can feel the moral decisions everyone -- thieves, law, hostages -- is constantly considering.
posted by archimago at 10:18 AM on November 29, 2021

This is kinda pretty good, just binged eps 1, 2 and just started 3.

OMG, there are five seasons? Hurray!

Admittedly, it's not really realistic, but I'm cool with it. Actually digging the relationships and drama.

Yeah emkelley, the English dub and sub not syncing is interesting. The subs seem a little more literal and the dub more... non-natively (or outdated) colloquial. Reminded me intensely of English dubs/ subs of HK movies in the 90s.
posted by porpoise at 6:59 PM on August 20, 2022

To be fair to dubbing, there are often difficulties in translation so that the spoken translation takes as much time and follows physical cadence as the original spoken lines.

But the English voice dubber for Berlin reminds hard of one of the English dub voice actors for 'Macross Plus.'

(omfg, Brian Cranston was English dub Isamu Dyson? NFGDW! me:dead)
posted by porpoise at 7:24 PM on August 20, 2022