Stream It Or Skip It?
We all have seen stories both true and fictional about people who have won millions in the lottery who spend money they don’t have, blow through their windfalls in short order, or get into legal problems. But all of those people are adults. What would happen if a group of teenagers, who do dumb teenage things even without money, win millions? That’s the premise of a new French comedy series.
Opening Shot: Off the shore of Marseille, France, a yacht speeds through the water, with a group of teenagers on it. A voice says, “Right now, you’re looking at me and my friends and I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, ‘Who the hell are these little assholes burning through fuel and cash on a yacht?’”
The Gist: Those four “little assholes” are a group of 17-year-old friends: David (Abraham Wapler), Jess (Sara Gançarski), Samia (Malou Khebizi) and Léo (Calixte Broisin-Doutaz). We see them enjoying the benefits of a €17 million lottery win, until they all get a text message that stops them in their tracks.
Three months prior to that, they were just regular teenagers in Marseille. David lived in a group home, and when he’s presented a chance to open the files to find out who his birth parents are, he turns it down. Samia is about to train for a national soccer team. Jess is trying to slow things down with her boyfriend by saying she’s trying abstinence. Léo is just an overall nice guy with an idiot brother named Tom (Florian Lesieur) and a huge crush on Samia.
When the group get an unexpected day off from school, David decides to get a lottery ticket from the store where he works, and asks everyone for numbers. They also get a number from a girl named Victoire (Jeanne Boudier), who is awkward and seems to have a thing for Jess.
Jess calls them all to meet her, and she tells them that they hit the jackpot. After the initial disbelief, they all celebrate, and immediately start spending money they don’t have. That includes David renting a G-Wagon from local drug dealers.
Then they find out that, as minors, they can’t cash in the ticket, prompting them to find someone who is over 18 who can be trusted. They already owe Tom money when he overhears David and Léo talking. Jess proposes that Victoire, who just turned 18, cash it in, but David doesn’t want to split the money any more than they already are. So they turn to their teacher, Mr. Pivot (Stéphan Wojtowicz), who agrees to do it for €1 million. But things don’t go quite as planned.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? We’ve seen series about people winning the lottery and all the consequences that occur: The Syndicate is one, and Windfall is another. But Young Millionaires feels more like My Name Is Earl, another lottery-adjacent comedy series.
Our Take: Igor Gotesman, the creator of Young Millionaires, really tries to give the show’s four main characters look at least reasonably sympathetic. David is a Jewish kid living somewhere where no one gets that he’s Jewish (the group home’s director gives him back his tallit, a shawl that adult Jewish males wear when praying, and calls it his “blankie”), and he’s lived without any semblance of family beyond his friends. Jess and her mother are scraping by. Léo struggles to assert himself. And Samia ends up not being able to pursue her athletic dream due to a physical issue.
Gotesman is also trying to show just how disastrous it is to give 17 year-olds, whose brains aren’t finished developing yet, a big pot of money to blow. None of them have practical plans for the money; in fact, they start spending it before they even realize that they’re too young to cash in the ticket. David and Léo pay off Tom; David rents that G-Wagon; they all buy new clothes; Jess cashes out her mother’s savings. We all know that people who start blowing through cash without understanding how the lottery works are completely doomed, and that story is complicated by the fact that these four are all teenagers.
But that “little assholes” narration that David gives at the beginning of the first episode is apropos here, because we have absolutely no reason to root for these four to a) finally cash in the ticket, which becomes comedically more complicated as the series goes along or b) figure out how to dig themselves out of the deep holes they’ve gotten themselves into. We’re not just talking about owing people money; the first two episodes show the group doing so many illegal things to get the winning ticket back in their hands that they’re all going to spend the money defending themselves in court.
The mayhem is supposed to be funny, but it isn’t. It gets to the point where you start to root against them getting the money so they can go back to their normal lives, even if those lives have issues.
Sex and Skin: None in the first two episodes.
Parting Shot: Mr. Pivot, whom the teens make a deal with to cash their ticket in, doesn’t make it across the street to the lottery office, and he’s the one holding the ticket.
Sleeper Star: We like how awkward Jeanne Boudier is as Victoire, and we know she’ll factor into the teens’ plans later in the season.
Most Pilot-y Line: Tom is so dumb that, when David gives him €50 as a down payment on his keep-quiet payment, he knocks €5000 off what he’s owed.
Our Call: SKIP IT. Young Millionaires doesn’t pass our “unlikeable but funny” rule; the main characters aren’t just unlikable, but they’re not very funny, which might be even more of a sin to us.
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.
Credit to Nypost AND Peoples
