Berlin and the lady with an ermine

Berlin and the Lady with an Ermine 

is a spin off web series from Money Heist. This is completely Berlin’s backstory. I vaguely remember some flashback portions about Berlin already appearing as a subplot in one of the earlier Money Heist seasons. Honestly, all the five seasons of Money Heist that I watched are now just blurry memories in my mind. So instead of struggling to connect everything with the original series, I just kept Berlin alone in my mind and watched what story this series was trying to tell.

The series doesn’t waste much time on detailed character introductions or spoon feeding. Since Berlin is the only familiar face for us already, the narration itself introduces the characters, their relationships, and even who is having issues with whom. Everyone gets introduced in just a few lines, but Damian alone gets almost two or three pages worth of narration. That’s because he is basically the second in command after Berlin in this team. But the funny thing is, he has no family, no wife, no kids, nothing. He lost everything and now genuinely works as a college professor. But he is also a thief. Teaching is just his side business.

Then there are two love pairs. One pair is already deeply in love. The other pair can’t even look at each other properly because of their broken relationship. In this season, whether they are robbing or not, everybody is constantly falling in love. Then they fight. Then they come back. Love again. Break up again. Repeat. Come again, love again, break up again, repeat. So the whole seven hours and twenty three minutes of this season, including credits, moves with romance, planning, robbery, betrayal, excitement and a little bit of glamour too.

At the beginning, Berlin’s playful and mischievous way of approaching women was honestly very entertaining. That alone made me continue watching the whole season. But only now I realize that those moments slowly disappeared once the story seriously jumped into the heist portion. After that, the only curiosity we have is about how exactly they are going to pull off the robbery. The success of the earlier Money Heist seasons was that they always made us feel like, No way they can escape this. But somehow they would still escape. More than the story or characters, that tension is what stayed in our minds.

If you think about it, obviously Professor appears here too. He has a cameo in this series. Other than him, don’t expect any surprise cameos and get disappointed. After Professor, the next most unforgettable character in Money Heist is definitely Berlin. Since he is the hero here, characters like Tokyo, Rio, Raquel, Nairobi and others are not part of this focus. But strangely, whenever I think about Money Heist, Arturo Roman also comes to mind. And this series too has a character almost similar to him, a slightly eccentric and annoying personality. Not as extreme as Arturo though. I don’t even remember that character’s name now, but I clearly remember his face.

Usually in Money Heist, the biggest thing is how the gang faces some impossible problem that gives us serious nail biting tension. But then the writing conveniently saves them somehow. We ourselves know there’s almost no chance for them to escape, but at the end of that sequence they somehow survive and casually continue with the next plan. This series also has one such moment. But only one. In the first robbery itself, even the gang doesn’t fully know what exactly they are going to steal. But by the end of it, they accidentally land on a huge treasure collection. The entire story after that is about what they decide to do with it. That final decision is where we understand Berlin’s real swag and intelligence. But apart from that, the strict, serious and cold Berlin we saw in Money Heist has absolutely nothing to do with this Berlin, except for the fact that both are played by the same actor.

Since this is Berlin’s own season, they could have focused only on him. But thankfully they gave equal importance and lots of screen space to every other character too. Especially their love stories and relationship fights are written in such a way that we genuinely become curious about what will happen to them next. Even people who have never watched Money Heist can still watch this as a standalone series because it doesn’t feel like just a side story or extension. It feels like a proper independent Berlin series. And this is only Season 1 of the Berlin series. Season 2 is also coming, and honestly, I’m eagerly waiting for it. It’s on Netflix. Go watch it. I’ll meet you again in the next review. See ya!