Four Marseillais teens and a winning ticket: 17 million euros fall on a Friday the 13th. Problem: at 17 years old, it’s impossible to cash in. In Young Millionaires, created by Igor Gotesman and launched on Netflix on August 13, 2025, euphoria turns into a legal, sentimental, and social headache. Between Marseille and its mirrors, friendship falters, secrets are filmed, danger invites itself. Who will pay the price of the jackpot?
A contemporary fable about money and age: ‘one is not serious when one is 17.’
Marseille, a Friday the 13th, four friends, a Lotto ticket. The formula is known, the sum too: 17 million euros. But the mechanics of Young Millionaires quickly diverge from the fairy tale. At 17 years old, it is forbidden to play or cash in. Indeed, the law and the regulations of the Française des jeux prohibit it. Thus, it reminds us that the dream always has a manual and safeguards. The setup makes you smile, then grates: the jackpot becomes a moral time bomb.
The series, available on Netflix from August 13, 2025, does not seek a lesson but vertigo: how does money reshuffle the cards when you are still building yourself? Here, euphoria mixes with panic, celebration with guilt, and luck with permanent suspicion.
Igor Gotesman, craftsman of a social friction comedy
At the helm, Igor Gotesman, creator of Family Business and Fiasco, continues his project of French comedies with high social tension. His style: characters drawn to the utopia of family, professional, or financial life. However, they are caught up by institutions and codes they do not master. Young Millionaires condenses this approach: fast dialogues, situations that diverge, situational humor, and a critical backdrop, never heavy-handed.
Around him, a team of writers (including Tania Gotesman, Olivia Barlier, Carine Prévot, Mahault Mollaret) and several alternating directors give the story a pulse that is both pop and nervous. Eight short episodes (about 30 minutes) compose a score that prefers relaunching to digression.
Marseille, main character
The 13th arrondissement becomes more than a setting: a revealer of contrasts. Marseille, filmed in its sharp lights, its beaches, and its neighborhoods. It hosts a youth that improvises. Moreover, this youth cheats a little but dreams a lot. The camera lingers on concrete details: scooters, sunny docks, stairwells where plans and secrets are exchanged. The city infuses the rhythm: accelerations, swerves, returns to the port.
Without folklore, the series establishes an affective cartography: local shops, high school, hospital, bank, police station. So many institutions against which minors collide – or negotiate. The sea, in the distance, is never just a postcard horizon: it’s the idea of escape and future, or its mirage.
The headliners: a generation under the spotlight
Four faces carry the fiction. Abraham Wapler embodies David, endearing clumsiness and worried gaze; the young actor – son of Valérie Benguigui – confirms a sense of rhythm and an emotional elasticity already noted. Malou Khebizi (Samia) brings a frank energy, fueled by the momentum seen in Diamant brut; her determination reveals flaws that magnetize the story. Calixte Broisin-Doutaz (Léo) plays resourcefulness and tenderness, a permanent sidestep that becomes a compass. Sara Gançarski (Jess) crafts a lively, ironic, then poignant presence.
Around them, a gallery of well-crafted supporting roles: Jeanne Boudier (Victoire) slaps the story with a double-edged smile, Florian Lesieur (Tom) adds a candid note that can turn into calculation, Louise Coldefy and Stéphan Wojtowicz draw adults who are neither angels nor demons. The pleasure is there: watching a young cast take the spotlight without mimicking their elders.
A teen suspense, an adult mystery
The good idea of Young Millionaires lies in its police film engine. A circulating proof, cameras spying, a blackmail tightening: the series introduces the thriller through a side door. The twists exist – and follow one another – but never at the expense of the group portrait. What interests here is how lies transform friendship: pacts are renegotiated, trust wavers, each tests their own limit.
Gotesman and his team play it finely: no gratuitous revelation or escalation. The cliffhangers leave more questions than answers, and give the viewer the pleasure of doubt. One finds oneself making hypotheses, suspecting in turn the loyalty of some and the good faith of others.
Money, class, image: themes under the comedy
Money is never neutral: it labels, it separates, it projects. The series observes how 17 million become an accelerator of inequalities. It examines the bank and its procedures. Moreover, it explores the temptation to buy belonging to a circle or style. Finally, it shows the difficulty of sharing, especially when one cannot yet sign.
The legal framework – major/minor – is not a gag: it’s a symbolic boundary. It reflects very contemporary French questions: precarity of early life, aspiration to mobility, weight of institutions, omnipresence of image (selfies, stories, surveillance videos). The series questions the staging of oneself: does one become rich when one displays it, or when one manages it?
Pop staging: 8 × 30 minutes that fly by
The 8 × 30 minutes format imparts an elastic narrative. Each episode has a clear objective, a pursuit or a trap. The direction favors mobility (camera up close, framings that follow bodies) and editing that bounces without rushing. One grasps the taste for ellipsis: a night is enough to shift the lines, a wide shot to release tension before the fall.
The soundtrack, largely rap and electro, densifies the atmosphere: urban pulses, catchy refrains, sudden silences when the group disagrees. It’s less a "young" varnish than a musical writing: a way to beat the measure of decisions.
Inspirations and deviations: from ‘Family Business’ to ‘Young Millionaires’
We find the Gotesman DNA: the mechanics of trickery and plan B (or C, or D), the quasi-family unit where one loves by jostling. But Young Millionaires distances itself: less pure situational comedy, more moral uncertainty. Where Family Business celebrated a family’s inventiveness, the new series emphasizes the fragilities of friendship tested by money. As for Fiasco, it shares with it the taste for the set that derails. Here, it’s everyday life that’s affected. Moreover, it appreciates the misunderstanding that turns into a threat.
Four trajectories, the same vertigo
Samia races against the clock with her sports project and her health. David seeks recognition without losing his humor. Meanwhile, Léo negotiates with concrete debts and a sticky past. Finally, Jess refuses to be just the reasonable friend and takes risks. Loves get involved, families too, with their share of unspoken. The series does not crush its characters under symbolism: it lets them make mistakes, learn, pay (sometimes dearly), start over.
The viewer moves forward with them because the story avoids morality and prefers choice: what do you do with a secret too heavy? How do you negotiate your share without losing everything? How far can you go to protect the group?
A sharp writing, trap scenes
Several sequences demonstrate a sense of dramatic trap. A hospital is reduced to chaos by an impossible mission. Moreover, a party turns, and a banker’s office becomes the place where everything is at stake. The comedy does not defuse: it delays the explosion. The dialogues, often funny, slip in a social acidity. This is due to the precision of words like the high school talk. Furthermore, the language elements of adults and the innuendos also contribute.
The staging works on distance: close-ups of friendships too close, wide shots where everyone steps away. As the compromising photo circulates, the frame tightens. One finds oneself scrutinizing the off-screen: who watches whom? who manipulates what?
What the series says about France in 2025
If there is satire, it is bittersweet. We see high school students who master tools (apps, cryptos, low-level scams), but stumble on the administrative; adults who claim to be protectors but are themselves tempted, an omnipresent bank, a stubborn law. The dream of social mobility clashes with frameworks: signatures, authorizations, responsibilities.
It’s a France where luck exists but requires method, where one can film everything all the time, and where this omnivision becomes power. The series questions value: what costs? what is worth? what is counted?
To watch or not?
For fans of French series on Netflix, there is the pleasure of a tight story to discover. Moreover, a convincing young troupe and a Marseille setting that rings true contribute to it. For a comedy that does not fear gravity and installs a suspense without cynicism. To see how, under the promised glitter, adult questions simmer: loyalty, guilt, law, class.
And then for this old-fashioned serial feeling, you turn the episode like a page. Indeed, you say "just one last," because a detail – a look, a message, a noise. Thus, each end folds into a mystery.
When adolescence meets gold and shadow
Young Millionaires is not a moral fable about easy money: it’s a mirror where adolescence looks at itself, sometimes frightens itself, often grows. The story knows how to be tender without naivety, funny without mockery, dark without despair.
We close the season with a promise: that of a group tested but not broken, and of a city that, under the sun, still keeps some shadowy areas. Enough to hope – or fear – that the next Friday the 13th will still be a lucky day.