Summary
Billionaire’s Bunker has a great premise that is unfortunately abandons over a too-long runtime, eventually succumbing to repetitive plotting and thrills.
Some shows get people in the door with a premise alone, and such is the case with Billionaire’s Bunker, another effort from beloved Spanish creative Álex Pina, of Money Heist and Sky Rojo fame. The question worth asking is what happens when that door slams behind you. In the case of this show, which is about a group of filthy rich people being locked in a doomsday bunker under false pretenses, the question has an additional note of relevance.
But there’s another way of putting this. Billionaire’s Bunker has a great premise and its fair share of surprises, but it eventually devolves into tedium thanks to a too-long runtime – eight hour-long episodes – and a gradual abandonment of what made that premise great in the first place. What’s left isn’t interesting enough to sustain interest, at least not the kind of interest that defines the fascinating and engaging early installments.
Pina created the show alongside Esther Martínez Lobato, with whom he collaborated on Money Heist and its spin-off, Berlin, so there’s a good creative pedigree here. And you can see the germ of a great idea and the relevant themes it’s trying to explore. It also hinges heavily on a twist revealed at the end of the first episode that I don’t want to spoil, but that I also kind of have to in order to get my point across. So, here’s a totally spoiler-free summary first, and then I’ll warn you when a bit more detail is coming.
So, initially, Billionaire’s Bunker is kind of an intimate family drama. With the world apparently ending in real-time thanks to a vague geopolitical calamity on the cusp of nuclear escalation, a bunch of uber-wealthy patrons of the company Kimera have all been moved into a state-of-the-art bunker. Kimera’s staunch figurehead, Minerva (Miren Ibarguren), keeps the place in tip-top shape with a very performative customer service manner. There are plenty of people there, but the ones of primary interest to us are Rafa (Carlos Santos), whose son, Max (Pau Simon), has just been released from prison after serving a hefty stretch for killing his fiance while driving under the influence, and Guillermo (Joaquín Furriel, Rest in Peace; Intuition; The Son), the father of the dead fiance whose sister, Asia (Alicia Falcó), is appalled by Max breathing the same filtered air as her.
Both of these families have more members, including Rafa’s wife and mother-in-law, and Guillermo’s second wife, whom he openly resents, but there’s no point in confusing matters by getting into all that. Suffice it to say, these people don’t like each other very much, and they’re being forced to live together in extremely close proximity.
But as it turns out – and this is the major spoiler bit – they’re all there under false pretenses, with the calamity they’re all hiding from having been manufactured by Kimera. This kind of allows Pina and Lobato to have their cake and eat it in the sense of having all the tension and claustrophobia of impending societal collapse while also not skimping on the conspiratorial heist-y thriller elements. But it doesn’t work like that in practice. Once you realize that the show isn’t actually about what you thought it was about, it falls apart a bit, becoming a serviceable but familiar thriller instead of a fascinating post-apocalyptic social experiment.
Sure, all the heavy-handed class commentary is still there, and the sneakier elements of the premise allow for some relevant exploration of how easily manipulable people can be, especially those who are used to paying for any privilege they desire, but the pace decreases as things go. The impressive production – which feels almost sci-fi with its tech and distinct color-coded uniforms – becomes sterile and oppressive for the wrong reasons, powered by tropey and sometimes – okay, often – unconvincing relationship drama.
There’s a predictability in Billionaire’s Bunker’s brand of chaos. Its characters, too, can feel overly familiar, despite capable performances bringing them to life. The problem with the filthy rich is you tend not to care about their financial or physical fortunes, and there’s a bit of that here, but what’s mostly at fault is repetitive plotting and character writing that dulls a keen initial premise. A shame, really.
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