Olivia Munn and Amanda Peet co-star in the drama with a dark sense of humor about the rich stealing from the rich.
Plot: After being fired in disgrace, a hedge fund manager still grappling with his recent divorce, resorts to stealing from his neighbors’ homes in the exceedingly affluent Westmont Village, only to discover that the secrets and affairs hidden behind those wealthy facades might be more dangerous than he ever imagined.
Review: Apple knew it had something on its hands when it renewed Your Friends and Neighbors before the first season premiered. When you land a star vehicle led by Jon Hamm and created by the showrunner of Banshee, Warrior, and See, you don’t take any risks. As the trend of stories focused on rich people behaving badly continues to ride on the success of Yellowstone and Succession, Your Friends and Neighbors brings a different angle to the formula. With Jon Hamm portraying an ultra-wealthy guy who has fallen on hard times and resorts to petty larceny from those who live near him, Your Friends and Neighbors takes a deeply dark look at what it means to be financially stable versus having so much you do not even know what you own. With a great supporting ensemble including Amanda Peet, Olivia Munn, Hoon Lee, Aimee Carrero, and more, Your Friends and Neighbors is a great addition to Apple’s growing catalog of marquee dramas.
Jon Hamm plays Andrew “Coop” Cooper, who opens the series awaking from a head wound next to a dead body, wondering how he got there. With a noir-esque voice-over from Hamm, the series flashes back to how the hedge fund manager got married, had kids, divorced, and found himself where he is now. Not long after we see the successful world Coop lives and works in, his boss, Jack Bailey (Corbin Bernsen), fires him, leaving Coop with few alternatives for employment. His business manager and friend Barney Choi (Hoon Lee) stresses he needs to find a new job to support the alimony he owes his ex-wife Mel (Amanda Peet) and child support for his Princeton-bound daughter Tori (Isabel Gravitt), son Hunter (Donovan Colan), and mentally ill sister Ali (Lena Hall). Despite a quiet relationship with fellow divorcee Sam (Olivia Munn), Coop struggles to make ends meet. That is when he stumbles upon a way to take from his obnoxious neighbors and so-called friends right under their noses.
Having seen seven chapters of the nine-episode first season, Your Friends and Neighbors manages to dig deep into many subjects with a level of nuance that we should expect from a Jonathan Tropper project. While the crimes that Coop perpetrates across the season are important to the show’s overall plot, the series also allows us to see another side of the story through the eyes of Elena Benavides (Aimee Carrero). Elena represents the unseen workers who support the grandiose lifestyles of the rich people in this story and partners with Coop to help him commit his crimes relatively unseen. Coop and Elena are characters who connect in the middle of these two disparate social classes and offer the story the opportunity to look at this divide in a very different way than we would see on Downton Abbey or similar “upstairs-downstairs” shows. The series also incorporates the cops, led by Rebecca Lin (Sandrine Holt), who are investigating the thefts and begin to suspect Coop may have something to do with the rash of crimes.
It would be easy to write Your Friends and Neighbors off as a Mad Men clone updated to 2025 since it does boast Hamm wearing impeccable suits with his hair perfectly coiffed as he downs whiskey after whiskey, but this is a much different drama than the AMC period drama. Hamm has an intensity that turns every line of dialogue into a masterclass of a monologue and every dick punch into a hilariously perfect moment. Hamm is also complimented by Amanda Peet and Olivia Munn, who play his ex-wife and current lover. Both actresses improve with age and get to portray women in middle age who are fully aware of what a superficial world they abide in and question whether they are living the lifestyle they truly want or truly deserve. So many characters in this series are woefully unhappy, but they put on masks to hide that insecurity so no one can judge them. That layer gives Your Friends and Neighbors a self-actualized element missing from soapier melodramas on other channels.
While Your Friends and Neighbors may not seem like the series you would expect from the creator and showrunner of Banshee, Warrior, and See, Jonathan Tropper’s novels and early output are far closer to the tone and style of this series. Tropper’s This is Where I Leave You is a prime example of how he looks at the levels of family dynamics and relationships to mine unique dramatic story elements. This is accentuated by the direction on the first two episodes by Craig Gillespie, known for I, Tonya, Cruella, Dumb Money, and the upcoming Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow. Gillespie has found a penchant for taking the ordinary in stories and giving it a twist, which comes through beautifully in setting the tone of this series. I love how Tropper and Gillespie echo the mystery of who these neighbors are and give us a portrait of Andrew Cooper as a broken guy trying to put himself back together.
Your Friends and Neighbors is a solid series about rich people being assholes and one of their own taking them to task without them even realizing it. This series is a showcase of what Jon Hamm does best. Still, it also offers a fantastic ensemble that looks at everyone from friends to family and those tenuous relationships that often define who people think they are. Jonathan Tropper has taken his excellent ability to create layered characters and put them into a show that is sad, funny, intriguing, and impossible to dislike. He does so without needing battle sequences, gunfights, or post-apocalyptic warriors. He does include a fair amount of sex, something that Your Friends and Neighbors use to great effect. Even if you don’t like this series as much as I did, I have a feeling you will learn something about the retail prices of luxury goods in a way you would never expect.
Your Friends & Neighbors premieres on April 11th on Apple TV+.
Originally published at https://www.joblo.com/your-friends-and-neighbors-tv-review/
