Berlin and the Lady with an Ermine Review: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 3.5 stars out of 5
A stylish and entertaining heist drama elevated by Pedro Alonso’s magnetic performance and Netflix-level production quality. While the storytelling occasionally slips into melodrama and over-the-top emotional chaos, the series remains binge-worthy for fans of the Money Heist universe.
Rating: 3.5/5
Platform: Netflix
Genre: Heist Drama / Crime Thriller
Release Date: May 15, 2026
Cast: Pedro Alonso, Michelle Jenner, Tristán Ulloa, Begoña Vargas, Julio Peña
Creator: Álex Pina Universe
If you’re coming to Berlin and the Lady with an Ermine expecting the tight, tension-filled heist mechanics of peak Money Heist — the carefully constructed plans, the breathless countdowns, the sense that every decision has precise consequences — you should probably adjust those expectations before the first episode ends.
What Netflix has delivered instead is something simultaneously more and less than that. More in the sense that the emotional universe is expansive, operatic, and genuinely full of things happening. Less in the sense that the robbery — stealing Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine from a wealthy collector in Seville — is sometimes almost incidental to the romantic jealousy, crew betrayals, ego implosions, and melodramatic confrontations happening around it.
Whether that sounds disappointing or intriguing probably determines whether you’ll love this or merely enjoy it.
The Thing That Makes All of This Work
Pedro Alonso is the answer to most of the questions this show raises about itself.
He has been playing Andrés de Fonollosa — Berlin — since the character appeared in the original Money Heist, and by this point the performance has developed a kind of lived-in confidence that’s genuinely impressive to watch. Berlin is manipulative, theatrical, frequently ridiculous, occasionally genuinely dangerous, and somehow charming throughout all of it. Alonso holds all of those qualities simultaneously without any of them canceling the others out.
There are scenes in this series that exist almost entirely as vehicles for his delivery — a monologue about desire, a confrontation that’s half negotiation and half performance, a moment of unexpected vulnerability that the character immediately tries to bury under another layer of bravado. In every one of them he’s compelling. In the weaker episodes, when the writing around him is less sure of itself, he’s still compelling. The show’s baseline watchability is largely a function of how much screen time he has in any given episode.
Seville and a Da Vinci — The Setup That Works
The premise has a natural sophistication to it that bank robbery, however elaborately planned, can’t quite replicate. Stealing a priceless Renaissance painting from a wealthy private collector involves art world knowledge, social infiltration, security system manipulation, and the kind of long-game planning that gives a heist story texture beyond the final extraction.
The planning sequences in the early episodes are the show at its most satisfying — Berlin and his crew mapping the target, identifying vulnerabilities, building covers and relationships that will eventually be weaponized. The art gallery settings, the luxury mansions, the hidden vaults, all of it given a premium European visual treatment that makes the environment feel genuinely specific rather than generic wealthy-person backdrop.
The cinematography deserves specific mention. The show looks expensive and uses that visual quality deliberately — the seductive atmosphere of the locations, the lighting that makes everything feel slightly heightened, the way interiors are framed to suggest both elegance and underlying danger. Watching this series is aesthetically pleasant even when the plot is being difficult.
Where It Gets Complicated
Somewhere around the middle of the season, the balance shifts. The heist doesn’t disappear, but it starts competing for screen time with romantic subplots, jealousy spirals, crew dynamics that are more soap opera than crime thriller, and emotional confrontations that go on significantly longer than the story requires.
This is a deliberate creative choice rather than a failure of craft — the show is clearly interested in the emotional chaos of these characters as much as the mechanics of the robbery. Berlin as a character has always been as much about emotional extremity as operational intelligence, and a series centered entirely on him is going to reflect that.
The problem is that when the emotional storytelling takes over, the heist stops feeling urgent. You lose the sense that every decision has consequences, that the plan is genuinely fragile, that failure is a real possibility. Those are the things that made Money Heist at its best genuinely tense, and their absence here is noticeable.
Some of the twists feel designed for shock value rather than earned by what came before. Some confrontations outstay their welcome by several minutes. A few plot turns resolve more conveniently than the setup deserves. The show prioritizes the feeling of drama over the logic of drama, which is a choice that entertainers can get away with but that prevents the series from reaching the level of something truly gripping.
The Supporting Cast and What They Bring
Michelle Jenner and Tristán Ulloa are the standout names in the supporting lineup, and both contribute meaningfully to the show’s emotional texture. The crew dynamics — the specific ways these people trust and distrust and use each other — are better developed than in some heist dramas, which helps the interpersonal conflicts feel like they have stakes even when the heist mechanics are in the background.
The chemistry within the group is one of the series’ genuine strengths. These feel like people who have complicated history with each other rather than an assortment of archetypes assembled for a job. That groundedness in the relationships makes the emotional turbulence more tolerable than it would otherwise be.
Some supporting characters remain underdeveloped by the end — introduced with apparent significance and then not given enough to do. This is partly a function of the series centering so heavily on Berlin that everyone else exists in relation to him rather than as fully independent presences.
The Money Heist DNA — Present But Diluted
Berlin and the Lady with an Ermine carries the franchise’s signature aesthetic — operatic emotion, larger-than-life characters making dramatically catastrophic decisions, a worldview in which even the criminals are fundamentally romantic figures — but it doesn’t consistently match the tension levels of the original series at its best.
The show is self-aware about what it is. It never pretends to be gritty or realistic. It’s selling a specific fantasy — glamour, cleverness, emotional intensity, beautiful people doing complicated things in beautiful places — and it understands that audience well enough to deliver it consistently.
What it can’t quite replicate is the specific unpredictability that made Money Heist so compulsive. The sense that you genuinely didn’t know what was coming, that characters you cared about were in real danger, that the plan could genuinely fail. Here, the emotional stakes are high but the thriller stakes feel managed — the show is too committed to its atmosphere to risk genuinely breaking it.
Is It Worth Watching?
Yes, with calibrated expectations.
If you go in wanting a stylish, emotionally overwrought, visually gorgeous European heist drama centered on one of streaming’s most compelling characters, this delivers exactly that. Pedro Alonso alone is worth several hours of your time. The Seville setting is used beautifully. The production quality is consistently high. The binge-ability is real — episodes end in ways that make the next one feel necessary.
If you go in wanting the tightest, most precisely constructed heist thriller in the Money Heist universe, you’ll find something more indulgent and less disciplined than that, and the gap between what you wanted and what you got may be frustrating.
The most honest frame for this series is probably this: it’s a character study about Berlin, wrapped in a heist, wrapped in a soap opera, with very nice cinematography throughout. If that sounds like something you’d watch, you’ll have a good time.
Rating: 3.5/5