Netflix has greenlit its highest-profile Las Vegas casino drama in a generation with The Roman, an eight-episode series built around Oscar Isaac and executive produced by Martin Scorsese. The show arrives as the latest bid to revive a genre most viewers only know through Casino, Ocean’s Eleven, and Rounders. Below that surface sits a longer, stranger archive of underrated casino movies and TV series that the new wave is positioned to inherit from.
Most lists of casino cinema start with the same handful of titles and stop there. The smarter place to start is the genre’s slimmer shoulders: a 2001 Spanish film that turned luck into a commodity you can steal, a 1986 NBC mob drama that ran on serialization before prestige TV had a name for it, a 1970s private-eye show whose pilot opened in a Thunderbird convertible, and a 2007 CBS musical that survived exactly two episodes. Each one reframed the casino as something other than a backdrop for heists and card-counting tutorials. None of them got the audience they earned.
Two Spanish Films That Built the Outsider Casino Genre
Spain delivered two of the most distinctive casino films of the 2000s, and both have largely slipped out of wider circulation. Intacto, the 2001 directorial debut of Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, treats luck as a stealable commodity. Survivors of plane crashes, Holocaust camps, and bullrings trade photographs and shakes on underground bets that escalate from roulette to Russian roulette, with five of six chambers loaded, to a blindfold sprint through a forest where the first contestant to hit a tree loses. The film received two Goya Awards, including a prize that helped send Fresnadillo on to direct 28 Weeks Later. It still carries a 72 percent critic score and an 82 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, and its central conceit has aged into something closer to a genre prototype than a curiosity.
Luna’s Game, also released in 2001 and directed by Mónica Laguna, is the rarer find. Ana Torrent plays a professional poker player raised inside the game who decides, in the film’s own description, to play the man who killed her father. Variety called it an absorbing character study of a hard-as-nails career gambler when the film stuck to the card room.
The two pictures share more than a release year. Both make the casino a space for a private wager, and both treat gambling as an extension of character. They also share a fate. Neither cracked the U.S. art-house circuit in any sustained way, and the streaming era has done little to repair that.
| Film | Year | Director | Lead | Hook |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Intacto | 2001 | Juan Carlos Fresnadillo | Leonardo Sbaraglia, Max von Sydow | Luck is a commodity you can steal, bet, or lose |
| Luna’s Game (Juego de Luna) | 2001 | Mónica Laguna | Ana Torrent | A poker pro hunts the man who killed her father |
Crime Story in 1986 and the Birth of Serialized Mob TV
Crime Story aired on NBC from September 18, 1986 to May 10, 1988, and it ran for only two seasons and 44 episodes. Crime Story’s two-season run on NBC was also one of the first sustained serialized crime dramas in American network television, with continuing storylines that ran an entire season instead of resetting every week. The format was ahead of its time and punished the show in the ratings.
The series starred Dennis Farina as Lt. Mike Torello and Anthony Denison as rising mobster Ray Luca, two men whose obsessive drive to destroy each other carries the show from Chicago to Las Vegas over its two seasons. Set in the early 1960s, the show moved the action into mob-run casinos once Luca’s syndicate sends him west to take over gaming operations. The Las Vegas half of the story leans hard into skimmed profits, rigged games, and gaming-license fights. The two-hour pilot, theatrically exhibited before broadcast, was watched by over 30 million viewers.
Crime Story’s structure mattered as much as its setting. It told a single story across an entire season, with each episode advancing the same arc, at a moment when most network crime shows reset every week. That choice cost it casual viewers and gave it a long afterlife in the canon of serialized crime drama.
For a 2026 viewer, Crime Story plays as a proof of concept for the streaming era it helped make possible. The serialized engine, the long-form mob war, and the Las Vegas casino as the seat of power all show up in the Netflix and HBO drama that came after. The show’s modest 44-episode footprint also points to something the new wave of casino dramas keeps rediscovering: the genre works best when it commits to a single arc and stays there. The Roman’s eight-episode order is the same instinct in a different decade. The genre has been waiting for a comeback built on those terms.
Vega$ and the Forgotten Michael Mann Detective
Three years before Crime Story, Michael Mann created a different Las Vegas series, and it landed on a different network. The Vega$ series on ABC aired from September 20, 1978 to June 3, 1981, running for 68 episodes across three seasons. Robert Urich starred as Dan Tanna, a private investigator who tooled around Las Vegas in a flashy red 1957 Ford Thunderbird convertible, parked the car inside his living room, and refused divorce cases and bodyguard work. The premise was simple: a high-end PI solves whatever crime Las Vegas throws at him in a given week, with rotating guest stars running through the casino-hotels of the Strip.
Tony Curtis played Philip “Slick” Roth, owner of several Las Vegas hotel casinos including the Maxim and the Desert Inn, in a recurring role that gave Urich a built-in client and the show a casino-industry thread. The series was produced by Aaron Spelling and created by Michael Mann, the same Mann who would go on to executive-produce Crime Story and later direct Heat and Collateral. The guest list ran through a deep roster of 1970s character actors, including Eve Arden, Shelley Winters, and a parade of guest stars who gave each episode a one-week showcase.
How a British Seaside Town Became Vegas for Six Episodes
Blackpool, broadcast on BBC One on 11 November 2004, is the most improbable casino show on this list. It is a British musical murder mystery, set in the faded English seaside town of the title, in which local entrepreneur Ripley Holden, played by David Morrissey, opens an arcade and gambling parlor that becomes the flashpoint for a murder investigation. David Tennant, before he became the Tenth Doctor, plays the detective assigned to the murder case, and Sarah Parish plays Holden’s wife. The premise is part Las Vegas neon, part provincial British light entertainment, and the show folds full musical numbers into the narrative, with characters breaking into song to advance the plot. A 2006 feature-length sequel, also known as Viva Blackpool, broadcast on BBC One, took Ripley Holden to Las Vegas and back.
The tonal ambition caught the attention of the awards circuit, with the show earning BAFTA and Golden Globe nominations. The ratings were always modest, and the property sat largely dormant in the two decades that followed. The 2006 sequel received a more muted reception and signaled that the original’s strangeness was a one-time gift. The six episodes of the original remain a tight demonstration of what the casino format can hold when the budget and the writing both tilt toward the strange.
Blackpool is also the only casino show on this list that doubles as a full-throated British musical. The musical gambit that made it charming in 2004 read as desperate five years later when American TV tried to repeat the trick. That American remake, and what happened to it, sits next on the list.
It is the genre’s most successful attempt to transplant its tropes into a setting where nothing about them should have worked. Blackpool is also the missing link between the 1986 American crime drama and the 2026 Netflix revival, with one American remake sitting squarely in the middle.
The Hugh Jackman Musical CBS Killed in Two Episodes
The American remake of Blackpool, Viva Laughlin, is also the most expensive warning on this list. CBS adapted the BBC serial into a musical comedy drama about a businessman, played by Lloyd Owen, who tries to open a casino in Laughlin, Nevada, gets drawn into a murder investigation, and sings to advance the plot. Hugh Jackman executive produced and starred as the rival casino owner Nicky Fontana, with Melanie Griffith rounding out the cast. The CBS cancellation of Viva Laughlin ranks as one of the fastest in network history.
The series premiered on CBS on October 18, 2007 and was cancelled on October 22, 2007, after two episodes aired. Nine Network in Australia followed suit the next day. The full order had been thirteen episodes, and CBS never aired the remaining five.
“Viva Laughlin on CBS may well be the worst new show of the season, but is it the worst show in the history of television?”
The New York Times review led with a question that doubled as a verdict, and the verdict spread faster than the show. The Times pinned the failure on the show’s dialogue and acting, though the format absorbed most of the blame in the recaps that followed. For a list built around sleepers worth catching, Viva Laughlin earns its place as the cautionary tale, the casino musical with a Hollywood lead and a network slot that could not survive two episodes against CSI reruns. The Roman, eight episodes and a Scorsese executive producer credit, walks a different line on a different network, and the lesson from Viva Laughlin is the simplest one in network television: the casino setting, on its own, has never been the story.
Netflix’s The Roman and the Pipeline Behind It
The Roman is the largest Las Vegas casino drama a streamer has ever ordered, and it borrows from every sleeper on this list at once. Netflix announced the eight-episode series in late 2025 and cast Oscar Isaac as Bobby Red, the president of the hottest hotel casino in town, in a show positioned as a modernized, still dangerous version of the legendary city. The full cast and production team of The Roman includes Brian Koppelman and David Levien, who wrote Rounders and co-wrote Ocean’s Thirteen, as creators and showrunners, and Martin Scorsese as executive producer.
- Eight-episode order from Netflix for The Roman
- Five-season run of NBC’s Las Vegas, now streaming on Peacock since December 29, 2023
- One Las Vegas casino drama executive produced by Martin Scorsese
- One network musical (Viva Laughlin) cancelled by CBS after two episodes in October 2007
The cast list doubles down on the prestige pitch. Oscar Isaac’s lead role in Netflix’s The Roman was reported by Variety in 2026, with the rest of the cast filling in around him. Betty Gilpin plays Bobby Red’s wife, a Las Vegas lawyer who knows the town’s darkest corners. Alec Baldwin plays a longtime casino chairman and surrogate father figure to Bobby, David Costabile plays a rival operator and longtime associate, and Shalom Brune-Franklin and Jimmy O. Yang round out the inner circle.
The Roman arrives in a casino-drama landscape that is more crowded than it looks. Ballad of a Small Player, Edward Berger’s 2025 film for Netflix starring Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton, and Fala Chen, is set in Macau casinos and began streaming in late 2025. The Highest Stakes, a 2026 thriller from Tony Dean Smith running 101 minutes and starring Seth Green, follows five strangers invited to a high-stakes poker game that spirals beyond the card table.
The Roman lands with the largest pipeline of casino drama behind it in years, and most of the titles that built that pipeline have never been easier to find. Torrente 5: Operación Eurovegas, Santiago Segura’s 2014 Spanish action comedy, sends a crooked cop into a casino-hotel heist in the fictional Eurovegas, and NBC’s Las Vegas, the James Caan and Josh Duhamel procedural set at the Montecito, has been streaming on Peacock since December 29, 2023.
| Show | Creator or showrunner | Network | Years | Episodes | Lead |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crime Story | Michael Mann (executive producer) | NBC | 1986 to 1988 | 44 | Dennis Farina |
| Vega$ | Michael Mann (creator), Aaron Spelling (producer) | ABC | 1978 to 1981 | 68 | Robert Urich |
| The Roman | Brian Koppelman and David Levien | Netflix | 2026 (announced) | 8 (ordered) | Oscar Isaac |
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Netflix’s The Roman with Oscar Isaac?
The Roman is an eight-episode Netflix drama set in the present-day Las Vegas casino business, starring Oscar Isaac as Robert “Bobby Red” Redman, the president of the hottest hotel casino in town. Brian Koppelman and David Levien created the series, J.C. Chandor directs the first two episodes, and Martin Scorsese executive produces. Netflix announced the order in late 2025 and cast Isaac in the lead in 2026.
What is the 2001 Spanish film Intacto about?
Intacto, the directorial debut of Juan Carlos Fresnadillo, treats luck as a commodity that can be stolen, traded, or wagered in underground contests. The games escalate from roulette to Russian roulette with five of six chambers loaded to a blindfold sprint through a forest where the first contestant to hit a tree loses. The film received two Goya Awards and carries a 72 percent critic score and an 82 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Which 1980s casino TV series influenced modern prestige dramas?
Crime Story, which aired on NBC from September 18, 1986 to May 10, 1988 for two seasons and 44 episodes, is the most cited. The series, created by Chuck Adamson and Gustave Reininger and executive produced by Michael Mann, told a serialized mob war between Lt. Mike Torello (Dennis Farina) and Ray Luca (Anthony Denison), a story that unfolded across an entire season with each episode building on the last.
Did Viva Laughlin really get cancelled after two episodes?
Yes. CBS premiered Viva Laughlin on October 18, 2007 and cancelled it on October 22, 2007, after two episodes had aired. Nine Network in Australia followed suit the next day. The original order had been thirteen episodes, and CBS never aired the remaining five.
Is there a Las Vegas streaming show on Peacock?
All five seasons of NBC’s Las Vegas, the James Caan and Josh Duhamel series set at the Montecito Casino and Hotel on the Strip, joined Peacock’s streaming library on December 29, 2023. The series, which also starred Nikki Cox, James Lesure, Vanessa Marcil, Molly Sims, Marsha Thomason, and eventually Tom Selleck, ran from 2003 to 2008.
What recent casino or poker films are on Netflix?
Ballad of a Small Player, Edward Berger’s 2025 film starring Colin Farrell, Tilda Swinton, and Fala Chen, is set in Macau casinos and began streaming on Netflix in late 2025. The Highest Stakes, a 2026 poker-game thriller from Tony Dean Smith running 101 minutes and starring Seth Green, follows five strangers at a card table whose contest spirals into something more dangerous.
