‘Berlin’ Review — Netflix’s ‘Money Heist’ Prequel Only Steals Your Time

The Big Picture

• Berlin fails right from the start, attempting to humanize the title character instead of embracing his less-than-human tendencies.
• The series endorses misogynistic behavior, normalizing harassment and presenting women as naive and easily manipulated.
• Berlin’s plot is illogical and relies heavily on coincidences, prioritizing “cool” scenes and twists over a well-crafted story.

For us TV lovers who appreciate the small-screen art in all its forms and genres, there’s rarely a series that makes us go “Why am I watching this?” Even though many of us don’t consider anything we watch a complete waste of time, Money Heist‘s spin-off and prequel series Berlin is here to challenge that notion.

Set some years before the events of Money Heist, Season 1 of Berlin follows the title character (once again played by Pedro Alonso) as he concocts a plan to infiltrate the vault of a bank in Paris and steal several precious jewels whose value amounts to €44 million. To do that, he puts together a team of thieves to come up with a flawless strategy for all of them to become rich beyond measure.

The first problem with Berlin is the same that has plagued several other spin-offs before it. The bank robber quickly became a fan-favorite in the flagship series, but this doesn’t necessarily mean he’d be the ideal protagonist for a story. Self-absorbed at best and a psychopath at the very worst (and we’ve seen his worst), Berlin would need a much more daring show to embrace his less-than-human tendencies and still be enjoyable and compelling. This series, however, takes the easier and ill-advised route of trying to humanize him to make the character more relatable.

True, Berlin is smart enough to know that even though the more-or-less central theme of the series is love, it is done “the Berlin way” — with obsession, toxic behaviors, and unhealthy seduction techniques galore. This suggests that, at some level, series creators Esther Martínez Lobato and Álex Pina understand the kind of character they have in their hands. However, other aspects of the series make it clear that the show is too in love with Berlin to show him as he truly is — or could be.

‘Berlin’ Doesn’t Have the Guts to Make Its Title Character Unlikable

Throughout all the episodes, it feels like Berlin is eager to either reward its title character’s behavior or present him as a mastermind when the events that play out suggest otherwise. Berlin constantly jeopardizes his own plan, displays erratic and inconsistent behavior, and doesn’t seem to care about much at all. Even his central relationship is more rooted in proving he can manipulate a woman rather than actually love her. This would all be fine and even fun to witness if Berlin illustrated, either verbally or thematically, how problematic its main character is to deal with — but the show never even comes close.

As an example, one of the love stories in the series starts with a man blatantly harassing a woman who, as far as he knows, is not interested in him. He makes sexual comments, invades her space, and insists on both patterns of behavior. And it gets worse: Berlin presents this as a perfectly normal flirting technique and even justifies it by showing that it’s all right to hit on women that way as long as they eventually come around, or if they’re “playing hard to get.”

That’s also a recurring problem with the vast majority of the female characters in Berlin. The women in the main cast are all naïve, can’t resist the men around them, and are not able to think clearly when it comes to love and desire. Ironically, the show throws around words like “misogyny” and “sexism,” as if only having them brought up by women means that the show couldn’t possibly have any instances of it. Cut to a woman having to vent about the man she loves to another woman and stating that she “needs to talk to someone of the same gender” about it. Without getting into any spoilers, the misogyny only slightly changes with the introduction of three characters in the final three episodes, but that’s not exactly a merit of Berlin itself, and you’ll know why when you see them.

‘Berlin’ Is Defined by Poor Writing and Illogical Story Choices

Berlin is not much better when it comes to its story arcs and plot points. Much like the flagship series that originated it, Berlin favors “cool” scenes and twists over logic, which presents viewers with several WTF moments — such as people running away from motorcycles on foot (and escaping), extremely important characters and devices that simply disappear, and women riding on top of racing cars while holding onto reins (I wish I was making this up) – and for no reason at all, obviously.

Not surprisingly, Berlin also relies on contrivances to move its story forward, which is the trademark of poor writing. You can find coincidences in pretty much every episode, and it’s pretty hard to think of the robbery as an ingenious plan when so many things could go wrong and don’t due to several instances of “good luck.”

Which brings us to the plan itself. The deeper you dive into the series, the less it seems like those characters have 40+ million Euros on the line – and that they’re risking their freedom to get it. Berlin himself checks out pretty early into the game, and then the story becomes a lot more about who will hook up with whom, while the major plan itself is almost reduced to a footnote. The flashbacks would have you believe otherwise, though. They present the robbery as something meticulous that’s planned down to the very last detail, but we never really see this meticulousness come to fruition. At least Money Heist tried to pretend it was intelligent.

All in all, the best thing for Berlin was Netflix selecting a late December release date. This way, it’s too late for the series to be included in any “worst of” TV lists, and it’ll no doubt get lost in the early-year pile that audiences tend to forget about within a couple of months. There is the possibility that it somehow gets renewed for Season 2 — but Netflix wouldn’t be that cruel to us, would they?

Rating: 2/10

Berlin is now available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.

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