The producers of Money Heist (La Casa del Papel) are in a fix. Should they continue with their original plans for a sixth season for Money Heist? Or should they instead work on the proposal of Malta’s Film Commission to produce the sixth season around the Vitals/Steward Heist?
For the uncultured and uninitiated, it is important to say that the Netflix series Money Heist is about a group of eight robbers led by a mastermind named The Professor. Their daring heists – including the heist of the Bank of Spain – earn them the public’s support.
Malta’s Film Commission, which desperately needs more money to keep feeding the wolves that service the powers-that-be, made a strong pitch: the Vitals/Steward Heist has a number of firsts – a must-have characteristic for any TV series.
The commissioner explained that never before, in Malta, have so few robbed so much money.
Never before have so many of those robbed so applauded the thieves.
Never before have so many spineless politicians played the mhux jien mamà (not me mum) game.
Never before have so many corrupt politicians got away with such a massive money heist.
Never before have so many politicians and associated lackeys feigned amnesia.
Never before was truth far stranger and more daring than fiction.
The producers of Money Heist, though interested, tried to rubbish the claim that this is a heist of many firsts in the hope of reducing royalties.
In the original series, the people applauded the robbers, they said. True, answered our Film Commissioner with a wry smile, but in this case people applauded those who were robbing them, not the people robbing the government. He clarified that this was not a case of robbers robbing, but people in the highest echelons of government, with the active or passive connivance of sycophants, robbing the people.
He added that while in the original series the forces of law and order were heavy-handed, in Malta’s case the forces of law and order decided to play the ‘three monkeys’ game.
Tut, tut, reacted the producers. They knew that the audience’s suspension of disbelief was essential for any production to be successful.
However they feared that in this case, what was being proposed was too exaggerated for audiences to suspend their disbelief and involve themselves with the series.
Our brave Film Commissioner was not deterred. He stated that up to now, Hitler’s ‘theory of the big lie’ was the dominant theory adopted by the propaganda peddlers of the corrupt. The Vitals/Steward Heist would mark a qualitative leap forward.
Beaming, the commissioner continued that a Maltese political professor had come up with the idea that to succeed in this heist one needed “an obscenely big lie theory” (i.e. what was done was done in the public interest), not just a “big lie”.
Seeing that the producers were having doubts, the film commissioner added that a good sub-plot would be the story of the Mrieħel Towers. An area where high-rise towers could not be built became an area where high-rise towers could be built following a meeting between the minister responsible for planning and the person now accused of the murder of the journalist. (Commissioner: Wink! Wink! Producers: Yeah, yeah! Both smiled as both understood.)
Never before have so many corrupt politicians got away with such a massive money heist- Fr Joe Borg
And while they are developing the plot, they could also add the Electrogas Heist, described by a former leader of the Opposition as the mother of all corruption. Two of the families involved in the Mrieħel Towers saga are involved in the Electrogas debacle. This would help reduce the expenses as fewer actors would be involved, he stressed.
To make the proposal more spicy and titillating, our commissioner also proposed adding a religious dimension. Why not install one of the dramatis personae as a member of a religious confraternità?
And what if one of the perpetrators would publicly declare that he found the Lord, though not accepting to donate the loot to the poor, as Zaccheus did?
The producers started feeling that all this could be something which could revive the Money Heist series.
They had one final question. Corrupt politicians were the losers of their series, and the people were happy that the robbers had trumped the politicians. Who were the losers in the Vitals/Steward Heist, they asked?
Our indomitable film commissioner started to stutter. He lowered his head in shame. The losers were the – according to government agency NSO – 103,330 people at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2021 (87,693 in 2017); the close to 40,000 in 2021 who could not afford to keep their house warm in winter (25,500 in 2017); the 31,000 in 2021 who could not afford a meal with meat, chicken, fish or vegetarian equivalent every second day (25,000 in 2017); the 27,300 who were severely and materially deprived in 2021 (19,600 in 2017); the 26,000 who did not have two pairs of properly fitting shoes in 2021 (15,000 in 2017); and the 26,000 who could not replace worn out clothes with new ones in 2021 (12,000 in 2017).
Suddenly stricken with a sense of contrition, the film commissioner added that the victims were also sick people whose dignity was undermined when they were hospitalised in corridors with no privacy instead of being well-provided for in wards.
The producers of the Money Heist series refused the offer. Even if the series could make them money, they did not want to have anything to do with all this dirt and corruption.
What about you?