Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Berlin’ On Netflix, A ‘Money Heist’ Prequel Where Berlin Leads A Heist In His Glory Days As A Thief

If there was any character from the massive Netflix hit Money Heist that was destined to get a spinoff, it was Berlin, played by Pedro Alonso. An exceedingly charming psychopath, he was such a breakout character during the show’s first two seasons that he was brought back in flashbacks after his character… well, fans of the series know what happened. The spinoff features Alonso as a healthy Berlin, before he was diagnosed with Helmer’s Myopathy and when he was leading his own team of expert thieves.

BERLIN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man walks in the early evening light, with a suitcase behind him. The man is Berlin (Pedro Alonso), in days of better health, bringing items his third wife has requested, because she has decided to leave him.

The Gist: Just as Berlin says goodbye to his latest wife, his crew pulls up. They’re doing a simple operation that night, but one which will help them in a much bigger heist.

They pose as police and walk into the mansion of an antiquities collector during a dinner party. The crew he’s assembled is one of the best he’s ever had: Keila (Michelle Jenner), a painfully-shy electronics expert; Roi (Julio Peña) a lock-picker who was always getting arrested; Damián (Tristán Ulloa), a college professor who can be a bit scatterbrained; and Bruce (Joel Sánchez), a dudebro who is a lot smarter than he seems.

Berlin is after a chalice the collector owns, but one of the dinner guests confronts the crew before they can get out of the mansion; Berlin holds a gun to the man’s head and tells him that it wasn’t worth getting killed to impress the woman who was his date to the dinner party, then lets the blubbering pseudo-hero go.

The crew then gather in a Paris hotel room, where Berlin introduces them to a new member: Cameron (Begoña Vargas), who is an adrenaline junkie with a very dark past. This is where Berlin tells the crew of his grander plan: Steal 44 million euros of jewels from 34 different European cities, all in one night.

How? Well, the chalice is a key to the scheme. The idea is to age it and make it look like an ancient artifact buried in under a church in the city. Posing as an archeological team, the “find” will lead the parish priest to give the crew permission to dig; the idea is to reach a hidden entrance to the city’s infamous catacombs, then go to an auction house where all the jewels are being sent.

Part of the scheme is to watch the comings and goings of the auctioneer, to indicate when the last shipment of jewels is coming in. The crew plants cameras around his apartment — encountering their dog in the process. While watching the footage, he talks to Damián about missing “the energy of love,” something that fuels him as much as the thrill of the big score.

That’s when he becomes interested in Camille (Samantha Siqueiros), the auctioneer’s wife. He follows her when he noticed she got out of bed late at night and put on makeup to walk the dog; she goes to a jazz club, where a friend invites her on stage to sing, and that’s when Berlin becomes enchanted.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Berlin is a prequel of Money Heist, centering around Berlin, back when he was in charge of his own crew, he wasn’t sick, and he was in his glory years.

Our Take: In a lot of ways, Berlin is a pretty standard heist show. There’s a crew, there’s a plan, and there’s a charismatic leader. Things never go smoothly, and the crew has to figure out how to overcome those complications.

The difference here is that we know Berlin from his time as the second-in-command of the crew on Money Heist. Here, though, he’s healthy and at the top of his game. But what seems to complicate matters for him is always matters of love.

The heist is the main story, of course, but how is it going to be compromised by the fact that Berlin has decided to pursue the wife of the very person whose movements the crew is watching? He has to know that what he’s doing could blow up the entire plan, but he doesn’t seem to care, which makes this more intriguing than the standard heist story.

Another aspect of the heist series that is pretty standard is getting into the lives of the crew and how they relate to each other. On Berlin, the jury is still out on how effective that part of the story is. There seems to be something brewing between Roi and Cameron, but the chemistry between them hasn’t really sparked as yet. Keila and Bruce might become another pairing to watch; that one is more interesting simply because of Keila’s awkwardness.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode, but the show is rated TV-MA, so there might be some of both in the rest of the first season.

Parting Shot: The parish priest decides to take the chalice and go to the dean of the university the crew is pretending to be from, which of course could blow things up before they begin. In the meantime, Berlin finds out that Camille is going to the opera alone; he dons a tux in order to “run into” her there.

Sleeper Star: Tristán Ulloa’s character Damián feels like the only member of the crew who actually has something more than “generic hot person with a mysterious past.” Let’s hope we find out more about him.

Most Pilot-y Line: We don’t quite have a handle on exactly when Berlin’s glory days were. The cell phones used indicate that it was maybe the aughts, but other technology we see indicate that it might have been later.

Our Call: STREAM IT. While Berlin doesn’t bring anything new to the heist genre, the charm of Alonzo as Berlin makes the prequel worth watching for both fans of Money Heist and newcomers to the franchise.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.