Young Millionaires – the new French dramedy now streaming on Netflix – unfolds as a tense, subtly satirical coming-of-age tale set amid the contradictions of Marseille. Conceived by Igor Gotesman, co-written with Carine Prévôt and Mahault Mollaret, and executed under a stable writer-showrunner vision, the series tracks four seventeen-year-olds who stumble into a €17 million lottery jackpot—an impulsive act that thrusts them from adolescent normalcy into a labyrinth of secrecy and moral quandary. Gotesman, whose earlier Netflix originals deftly balanced rueful wit and grounded emotion, sustains here a tonal precision that is quiet in its observation rather than overtly comic. The storytelling is assuredly poised.
At the core of Young Millionaires lies the quartet—Samia, Léo, David and Jess—connected by schoolyard intimacy but divided by individual yearnings. The narrative catalyst arrives when they realize none of them is of legal age to claim the prize, leading them to co-opt classmate Victoire, aged eighteen and ostensibly more independent, to temporarily hold the winnings. That decision fractures their intimacy in subtle ways: friendship morphs into negotiation; trust becomes a fragile commodity. The logistical operation—how to conceal large sums of cash, keep banking appointments clandestine, and continue studying for Baccalauréat exams—emerges as a study in adolescent resourcefulness under duress.
The narrative structure itself performs a clever balancing act. Each episode concentrates on a discrete yet interconnected operation—securing safe-keeping, staving off parental suspicion, managing Victoire’s outsider status—while layering in personal beats: first affection, academic anxiety, family tensions, identity explorations. The episodic arcs escalate steadily toward a dual climax: the approaching school-leaving exams and the legal majority threshold. This concurrent ticking clock and youthful caper situates the series within a structural tradition that is part thriller, part bildungsroman.
Theme-wise, Young Millionaires is oriented toward the collision between youth and adult privilege. Money, here, is not merely a means to adrenaline or spectacle—it symbolizes autonomy, desire, inequity, and transformation. The characters’ fantasies—of luxury cars, designer clothes, fleeting glamour—are refracted through their limited experience of economic precarity. The show interrogates whether affluence bestows freedom or imposes new chains. It avoids moralizing; instead, ethical tension surfaces naturally, as part of how power unsettles even the most foundational bonds.
The performances are anchored by authenticity. Abraham Wapler, Malou Khebizi and Calixte Broisin-Doutaz imbue their characters with subtle confidence and fissures of uncertainty. Sara Gançarski and Jeanne Boudier, portraying Victoire and Jess, respectively, navigate the emotional ambivalence of inclusion and exclusion with nuanced restraint. Their group dynamic has been constructed with precise observation—gestures, silences, unspoken hierarchies—that render their interactions textured. This is not ensemble acting designed to dazzle, but the kind that convinces through small, lived-in particulars.
Supporting roles further enrich the ambivalence of their world. Parents register behavior changes that seem harmless but compound the tension; a guidance counselor’s off-hand remark resonates with unintended weight; school staff oscillate between oblivious indulgence and cautious suspicion. Each character contributes realism, so that the teenagers’ secret heist does not inhabit a vacuum but pulses within a credibly inhabited community.
Direction and visual design are calibrated to enhance thematic layering. Directors Théo Jourdain, Mohamed Chabane, Tania Gotesman, alongside Igor Gotesman himself, sustain compositional unity through recurrent visual motifs—a handheld tightness in scenes of clandestine exchange, elevated wide shots when characters reflect on possibilities, lingering frame compositions that underscore the gap between their mundane setting and imagined opulence. Marseille, as setting and character, figures prominently: the scrub-lined hillsides, graffiti-tagged facades, schoolyard flotsam, and seaside vistas reinforce an urban-peripheral milieu often overlooked in mainstream French media. This grounded backdrop accentuates the emotional and social distance between the protagonists’ ordinary environment and what money could buy.
The score—crafted by Marseille native Léa Castel with collaborator Yoan Chirescu—underscores the tonal duality. Pulse-driven rhythmic tracks amplify euphoria when plans succeed; plaintive, minor-key melodies surface in moments of fractured trust or longing. Music is deployed judiciously, never overwhelming, and always reinforcing an emotional subtext rather than imposing sentiment.
Stylistically, the writing avoids overt polish. Dialogue feels colloquial, sometimes halting, sometimes hyper-aware of social codes—text-message syntax, juvenile evasions, sudden eloquent admissions. This linguistic texture undergirds the verisimilitude of adolescent talk: the transitional register of young adulthood caught between slang, earnestness, guarded wit, and sudden vulnerability.
In cultural terms, Young Millionaires contributes to Netflix’s expansion of non-Parisian French narratives, positioning Marseille—viewed nationally as peripherally urban—at the narrative center. It participates in a broader trend of regional specificity in global streaming offerings, foregrounding local identities in stories that resonate universally. Its concerns—economic aspiration, youth autonomy, ethical complexity—are not limited to France, but the particular social texture of Marseille lends them tangible weight.
The series resists facile answers. It never presents wealth as clean-cut redemption or pure corruption. Rather, it registers money as a catalyst, revealing latent fragilities, recalibrating power relations within friendship, and exposing the incomplete adultification of its protagonists. Occasional moments of self-reflection dig past the superficial punchlines of a teen comedy to linger on how every choice ripples across relationships, loyalties, and sense of self.
By merging tonal subtlety, grounded characterization, and structural tension, Young Millionaires emerges as a thoughtful addition to contemporary youth drama—one that trades spectacle for scrutiny, whimsy for emotional acuity. Its cultural contribution lies in portraying adolescence entangled with responsibility, chance, and consequence. It doesn’t offer neat resolution—but perhaps that is the point: that youth, even when flush with fortune, remains provisional, uncertain and profoundly human.
All eight episodes of Young Millionaires are now available to stream on Netflix as of August 13, 2025.
