What would you do if you won the lottery today? I bet you’ve fantasized about it: a magical windfall that could come save you from your mortgage and the impossible price of childcare, pluck you away from the grime and the grind of your day-to-day life and plop you on a warm tropical island with a cold drink in your hand.
In the Israeli show “Seven Figures,” now streaming on Netflix, two couples and two single men get to answer that question, and the reality of it is, as you would imagine, a lot less fantastical and idyllic than a life of cocktails by the pool. The show, written by Noya Oren and directed by Nir Bergman, tells the story of a group of lottery winners as they’re forced to undergo a workshop with a social worker before receiving their money.
There’s Arnona (Liora Rivlin) and Tzvi (Shlmo Bar’aba), a kibbutznik couple who enter the workshop with the full intention of keeping their retired peaceful life the same and giving the money to their two daughters. There’s a young engaged couple from the south, paramedic Ruti (Shani Klein) and unemployed Amir (Ofer Hayoun), who hope to use the cash for a lavish wedding and kick off a new phase in their lives. There’s Adam (Elisha Banai), a coffee shop owner from Givaataim, a city near Tel Aviv, who hopes to put the money into his business and perhaps enjoy some of his freedom and youth. Then there’s Alex (Rotem Keinan), an accountant with social anxiety who doesn’t want the money at all, hoping to keep his life the same.
The group is intercepted in those dreams by Ayelet, played by Roni Dalumi, a social worker tasked with preparing them to deal with their new lives as millionaires. “Seventy percent of those who win will lose all the money in three to five years,” she warns them, all doom and gloom when she shares that people also often lose their families and friends over money conflicts after their wins.
For eight weeks, with each of those weeks being the focus of the show’s eight episodes, the seven winners meet and talk about how to prepare for their new fortune, delving deep into their history and psyches to make those plans and discussing how they can keep all the vultures at bay when the news spreads that they won multiple millions of shekels. Ayelet gives them the chance to ponder what they’re really going to do with their money, forcing them into the liminal space where they’re preparing to be millionaires but aren’t yet.
Tzvi gets a chance to think about what would happen if he could use that money to live a more authentic life, perhaps one separate from his strong-willed wife. They both get sent on a journey of sexual discovery that’s delightfully real and unexpected. Amir, despite being warned not to make any promises with the money, is breaking all the rules, the most important of which is not to reveal their big win to anyone yet. When he shares the news with a member of Ruti’s close-knit but financially not-so-well-to-do family, all hell breaks loose. Her mother demands she split the win evenly with her siblings, which opens up old wounds and unfulfilled dreams that tears them apart.
As for Adam, he finds out the free-spirited Gali (Sharon Stribman) who he met at Israel’s version of the Burning Man festival, Midburn, is pregnant, and that news also puts into question his hopes of youthful revelries. He’s confronted with his own complex family dynamics — a brother who relies on him and a father who never knew how to be a father, played by a wonderfully charming Shai Avivi.
For Alex, he finds in social worker Ayelet a way to deal with his interpersonal issues, which threaten to impact his comfortable work routine.
“Seven Figures” is originally titled in Hebrew “Six Zeroes,” a wonderfully punny title describing the six comical souls who won’t stop stepping on their own toes on their way to getting that big fat check. But the English title is perhaps more accurate because the show itself is about seven people — Ayelet’s character, though not a lottery winner herself, is deeply shaped by her financial reality. Her father left her family in a bind, her mother won’t stop using her, and despite her coaching all her clients to take ownership of their lives and new financial situations, she herself struggles to put her foot down and extricate herself from these issues. She sleeps in the same hall where she and the group meets every week in order to hide her recent break-up from her mother, who seems to also weasel out every loose bit of change Ayelet manages to get her hands on.
While the rumors about the tragic realities of lottery winners are, it seems to be, greatly exaggerated, money can change everything and nothing at all, and it’s something we rarely talk about, at least not here in America amongst polite society.
In Israel, it’s a much less taboo subject. People have that “chutzpah” to ask strangers on the street how much they earn and what they pay in rent. While here we try to pretend that what’s in our bank accounts and paychecks doesn’t have any real effect on who we are as people, I think we all know deep down that money shapes our relationships and our lives, from our ability to reach for that dream career and dream life, the relationship with our parents that are either full of IOUs or an accounting of what we never got. But all of those issues are also about things bigger than money — they’re about what we think we’re worth, the risks we allow ourselves to take and what we’re willing to sacrifice for those we love. And these are all issues central to this show.
One of my favorite podcasts is “Death, Sex and Money,” in which people talk about how those three “taboo” subjects shape our lives, and “Seven Figures,” too, touches on the subject with the same mix of sincerity, delicacy and humor.
Our kibbutzniks get to know each other more, and there’s something about their late-in-life coming of age that feels particularly special to see. Liora Rivlin, especially, despite playing such an iron-fisted woman, manages to be incredibly moving and relatable. Amir and Ruti both learn more about their own flaws in a way that threatens to break their upcoming marriage. Adam learns painful truths, Alex is drawn out of his comfort zone, and Ayelet too learns the distances she’s willing to go for money.
The journeys that the protagonists in “Seven Figures” go through in this show both have nothing and everything to do with that hefty check six of them get at the end. And all seven journeys are surprisingly touching, heartbreaking and beautiful, and tragically, ridiculously human.
You can now stream “Seven Figures” on Netflix.
