When a series is based on actual events, but the characters are all fictional, there’s a chance that things go off the rails, with over-the-top performances and outlandish situations. The shows that work best practice a lot of restraint. A new series about a politically-motivated siege on Barcelona’s Central Bank in 1981 practices that restraint.
BANK UNDER SIEGE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: The Central Bank in Barcelona. May 23, 1981, 9:05 AM
The Gist: A group of about a dozen men, all toting guns, put on ski masks and brazenly walk into the front door of the Central Bank. The leader of the group, called No. 1 (Miguel Herrán), shoots into the ceiling and demands the crowd to get down. The robbery is happening exactly three months since an attempted coup of the relatively new democratic government in Spain was attempted in the Congress of Deputies. As police respond to the robbery, No. 1 and the group have a shootout with authorities.
It’s the first day on the job for Maider (María Pedraza) at the Barcelona Daily, where her late father used to work. The editor-in-chief, Isabel (Patricia Vico) liked her work and emphasizes that her getting the job has nothing to do with her father or his death during the revolution. Almost as soon as she sits down at her new desk, she fields a phone call from someone associated with the bank robbers, who leaves an envelope at a phone booth which contains their demands. She grabs Berni (Hovik Keuchkerian), a veteran photojournalist who has won awards but is mostly drunk and burnt out, to go to the scene.
There, they find the envelope and read the demands: The release of three people associated with the February 23rd attempted coup. The robbers will start killing hostages in bunches if the demands aren’t met. Maider feels she has the scoop of the year, but when Paco López (Isak Férriz), the police detective in charge of the case, comes on the scene, he asks Maider to not put out the contents of the letter for an hour. Maider, making a rookie mistake, complies, but when she realizes that she’s being scooped, she protests to Paco, who locks her and Berni up in a police van.
In the meantime, it seems like the robbers are using the political angle as a cover for an actual robbery. No. 1 negotiates with Paco to have food brought in by the Red Cross, in exchange for some hostages being released. But he also uses it as an opportunity to get outside and see what he’s facing. In addition, he shoots a young hostage in the knee, knowing he’ll be released and debriefed by the police.
The prime minister dispatches the head of the Civil Guards to Barcelona, and when he hears the voice of No. 1 on the phone with Paco, he’s pretty sure that it’s José Juan Martínez Gómez, a member of the Guards who disappeared after the attempted coup.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Even though the show is based on true events, Bank Under Siege is more or less a heist series along the lines of Money Heist.
Our Take: Bank Under Siege feels like a show that’s going to be more about how various groups of people react during the siege than about the characters themselves. If there is any character development in the series, it will happen in the moments in between things that happen. So there will be a mention of something, like Maider’s father, in passing that will fill in some blanks. But for the most part, this feels like a story where the characters will be identified with how they react in this extreme situation.
The characters surrounding this heist are ones we’ve seen before: The young journalist trying to prove herself paired with the old pro who is embittered, cynical and always carrying a flask; the cop who still does things the old way; the wily leader of the criminal team who seems to outsmart everyone until the very end.
There is a lot of potential for archetypical characters like this to go awry. But the performances of Pedraza, Keuchkerian, Férriz and Herrán are restrained enough to make these archetypes at least seem relatively close to the real people they likely represent. At a certain point will there be some eye-rolling behaviors from these characters? Probably. But for now, everyone is playing their characters in a relatively realistic manner.
The most intriguing part of this story is how the robbery uses the political aspect as cover. Yes, José and his crew may have supporting the opposition in mind, but in a scene where they get giddy at all the money in the vault shows where their motivation really is. Of course, it’s clever to use the coup attempt as a cover, but it’ll be interesting to see how long that cover lasts.
Sex and Skin: Nothing.
Parting Shot: José, after finding out how much progress his crew is making drilling through the wall next to the vault, puts his mask back on to go back to the hostages.
Sleeper Star: We like Patricia Vico as Isabel, the newspaper’s editor. She has Maider’s back because so few women are in the business at the time, but she’ll be tough on Maider as well.
Most Pilot-y Line: We’re actually not 100% sure why José shot the young hostage in the knee, other than an opportunity to show some blood. Maybe we just need to rewatch that scene.
Our Call: STREAM IT. While there is a lot of opportunity for Bank Under Siege to get silly, it’s relatively restrained in its first episode, and sets up an intriguing standoff as the season goes along.
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.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Bank Under Siege’ On Netflix, A Dramatization Of A 1981 Bank Robbery And Hostage Siege In Barcelona appeared first on Decider.