April 3, 2020, 9 am: for fans of television on demand, the moment has arrived that is awaited by millions of people all over the world. Start the fourth date with the Netflix streaming of Paper House, one of the most successful non-English-language TV series of recent times.
It is difficult not to grasp the unfortunate coincidence with what is happening in the world these days with the Coronavirus emergency, to such an extent that a paraphrase of the title with "The Paper World" would not be entirely inappropriate. It really is a fragile world, a system of economic, social and cultural relations which are and will be even more so in the coming times put to the test by this devastating health emergency which does not seem to spare anyone. The paper house will certainly be a new success and will certainly arouse interest to see what the conclusion of this new season will be, exactly as we are all waiting for the end of this planetary nightmare.
The elements of interest and analogy with the moment we are going through are more or less all there: first of all the surprise, where the authorities found themselves somewhat unprepared to face a theoretically completely predictable event. The second element is the overlapping and confusion of roles: a continuous game of roles, where it is increasingly difficult to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys, the certainties of statistical data from fake news. The robbers assault the Mint without injuring or killing anyone and present themselves as the "good guys" against a cynical, detached and inefficient state. The same police inspector called to deal with the robbers at a certain point becomes the lover of the Professor, the "mind" of the gang while, outside the Bank, people sympathize with them instead of being in solidarity with the Police. Finally, there are feelings and passions which, in any case, remain a formidable driver of relationships between individuals. Exactly that same engine that at this moment should push towards solidarity and sharing common goals and interests.
Already from the first words of the trailer of this new episode it is possible to grasp the tension of the moment and, in a certain sense, its contemporaneity: "Everything can go to shit in a thousandth of a second" and it is precisely, more or less, what is really happened in Italy and in the rest of a large part of the world when, suddenly, within a few days, we found ourselves faced with all the common fragility and weakness of human nature in the face of such a sneaky and devastating enemy.
Step back. The paper house begins in 2017 and is divided into two seasons, each consisting of two parts (the one that starts today is the fourth) and several episodes. The first season tells of a robbery at the central mint of Spain which ended with the protagonists fleeing and dispersing in various parts of the world. The Professor, soul and mind of the group where each member has a city name, brings them together again to offer them another great coup: the gold reserve of the Bank of Spain. A feat bordering on the impossible but which the group manages to carry on until the police manage to arrest one of its members and seriously injure another. Everything seems compromised and the last episode ends with a war scene: an armored car that was supposed to break through the Bank's front door is hit by a rocket that blows it up.
The fourth part picks up on the eve of what is about to take shape as the final clash between the police determined to stop the criminal action and the gang led by the Professor who wants to carry out the coup. It promises to be binge watching of particular intensity.
