Heist shows are never supposed to be all that serious. But some are more madcap than others, like Money Trap: The Karun Treasure, a new Netflix series from Turkey.
MONEY TRAP: THE KARUN TREASURE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: In a gambling hall/bowling alley, a man grabs a ball and shows his associates how to bowl. But they’re not just aiming for the pins; they’re aiming for the bound and gagged men lying in front of the pins.
The Gist: One of the people trying to avoid the bowling balls is Asım Noyan (Yılmaz Erdoğan), who leads a gang of con artists that includes his wife Lerzan (Ezgi Mola). Sometime earlier we see the group execute an elaborate con involving a mansion and a police raid to liberate an ancient leather treasure map found by two farmers that dug it up in their field.
At the same time, a wealthy, cigar-chomping woman named Nefise (Demet Akbağ), has gotten word that a sarcophagus has been found, but the enclosure is empty, save for some remains. She wants the map, and she employs the man who uses the bowling balls to get it for her.
Asım at first dismisses the map, thinking it has no value, but some people on his team want to put it in front of experts; it may very well be a real map that leads to a real treasure. Asım starts to come to their way of thinking when his usual casino is sold to a violent criminal named Sarı Saruhan (Kıvanç Tatlıtuğ), with whom Asım has had run-ins in the past. Saruhan is looking to collect Asım’s massive gambling debts, and shows Asım the consequences if he doesn’t pay up in a few days.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Money Trap: The Karun Treasure, written by Yılmaz Erdoğan, has a similar feel to the Money Heist spinoff series Berlin.
Our Take: When a heist series features a treasure map, you know that it’s not exactly going to take itself all that seriously. In fact, Money Trap: The Karun Treasure might be more comedy than caper, with Erdoğan’s portraying his character Asım as less of a criminal genius but as a con artist with money problems and lots of funny flaws. His team, aside from his wife, is relatively faceless at the beginning of the series, but their function really seems to help Asım get the treasure that might help him pay off Saruhan.
Things do get annoyingly frantic by the end of the first episode, as Saruhan tells Asım to read a recipe for something called “chicken breast pudding” as Saruhan cracks walnuts and another debtor slowly drowns in a Houdini-style water tank. But we’re looking forward to seeing Asım and his team pursue this treasure that may or may not exist, even as Saruhan pursues him from one direction and Nefise’s goons from the other.
Performance Worth Watching: Yılmaz Erdoğan is equal parts annoyed and scheming as Asım Noyan. His pained smile when he hears that his daughter Nazli (Bensu Soral Baş) is going to be pregnant was priceless.
Parting Shot: Asım is driven almost to distraction by Saruhan’s nutcracking and the drowning debtor that’s a few feet away.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Money Trap: The Karun Treasure is supposed to be a fun, light romp of a series and its first episode does a good job setting up what viewers should expect from it.
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.