Summary
Plenty about Bet doesn’t work, but it’s so full of big swings and fun ideas that it’s an easy, characterful binge-watch all the same.
Netflix’s Bet (2025) is a live-action adaptation of an anime, itself transplanted from a manga, and at this point, I should probably mention that I have no familiarity with Kakegurui whatsoever, in any of its various guises, and thus this review won’t mention it again. If you’re looking for something to confirm or deny how much Simon Barry’s ten-part series adheres to the source material or butchers it beyond all repair, sorry – you’re not going to find it here.
Simon Barry, you say? Indeed, the creator of Warrior Nun seems to be a dab hand at using well-liked source material as a jumping-off point for ballsy adaptations that annoy long-time fans but delight newcomers, and that’s pretty much the approach that seems to have been taken with Bet. It’s a show that takes some fairly big swings and not all of it works, but I mostly loved it and I suspect most people who aren’t worried about the accuracy of the costumes will too.
The premise revolves around Yumeko Jabami (Miku Martineau, Kate), an enigmatic transfer student who arrives at St. Dominic’s Prep with a mind to take down its dominant and corrupt Student Council as revenge for her parents’ murder. St. Dominic’s is one of those weird made-for-TV schools where nobody seems to do any work, there are no teachers in sight, and the whole place is divided into themed cliques with eccentric gimmicks. The costuming and social structure are a little reminiscent of Elite, but that’s as far as the comparison goes.
This is because most of Bet’s high-school social dynamics are filtered through the extremely exaggerated lens of high-stakes gambling games and anime-esque stylistic flourishes. Yumeko is a compulsive gambler and St. Dominic’s revolves around a leaderboard where every student’s total prize pot determines their standing, with the richest comprising the Student Council, headed by its nepo baby president, Kira (Clara Alexandrova). Logically, this means that several students are in considerable debt and forced to become “house pets” – in other words, slaves to the wealthier students.
These are fairly outlandish ideas to transplant into the more relatable real-world setting that the live-action treatment creates, which is probably the show’s biggest problem. A lot of the drama is over-the-top in myriad ways; characters that dress like video game mini-bosses, surreal cutaways, bursts of uber-violence, and yelping reactions to key developments that are anime staples but here have to rub shoulders with much more grounded human drama. It’s odd and can be a little jarring.
But the human drama mostly works, largely thanks to the cast being so up for it. Miku Martineau is extremely good as the lead; she has that mysterious, slightly dangerous intensity – reminiscent of Nanno from Girl From Nowhere – but shows genuine emotion when the situation calls for it, especially when it relates to her shadowy past. She’s also very attractive, which instead of being shied away from immediately becomes a plot point – Yumeko has every male and female student on strings from the second she arrives at St. Dominic’s, facilitating some romantic subplots and creating interesting tension with other characters, up to and including Kira.
(L to R) Clara Alexandrova as Kira and Anwen O’Driscoll as Riri in Bet. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025
The supporting cast do their jobs, too. Yumeko’s inner circle quickly expands to include Ryan (Ayo Solanke), a British-Nigerian student with his own secrets who’s also harbouring a pretty extreme crush on Yumeko, Michael (Hunter Cardinal), a reluctant bookie who Yumeko opens up to about the deaths of her parents and revenge mission, and Mary (Eve Edwards), the first Student Council member Yumeko takes down who is reduced to Ryan’s house pet and eventually a conflicted ally. These are all likeable and engaging characters who create an interesting ensemble thanks to their varied personalities, circumstances, and motivations.
As a pure high-school drama Bet probably wouldn’t work that well, but the gambling games add a lot of surprising tension and excitement because they’re clearly designed as narrative devices. One revolves around monitoring the players’ heart rates while they exchange dug-up personal secrets; another is a school-wide game of capture-the-flag; others leverage the power and social dynamics to different effect, especially once a side bets system comes into play that adds different stakes and modifiers to the main leaderboard.
Having said all this the character drama is still very much present. Some of it works well – everything involving the main cast, mostly – and some of it doesn’t, particularly an ill-advised stalker subplot intended to humanize Dori (Aviva Mongillo, Workin’ Moms), one of the more one-note Student Council members. I could do without these more try-hard elements, which can sometimes feel as if they’re present to give everyone something to do rather than be valuable on their own terms, but for the most part Bet is slight and well-paced enough that it doesn’t really have time to get bogged down.
Ten episodes seems like a lot, arguably too many, but they’re all under 40 minutes and breeze by with so much going on, especially since the outcome of the games keeps upending the social dynamics and raising the stakes. Everything evolves fairly naturally, and by the time the finale rolls around, you’re more invested in the interpersonal relationships than the gimmicks, which feels just about right.
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