Your Friends and Neighbours: Jon Hamm stars in 'frothily fun' black comedy
Crime caper about a hedge fund manager who resorts to burgling his 'obnoxious' neighbours after losing his job
"Mad Men"'s Jon Hamm goes "from Don Draper to crime caper" in this "frothily fun" black comedy from Apple TV+, said Michael Hogan in The Guardian.
The actor brings his "slippery good looks" to the role of Andrew "Coop" Cooper, a divorced hedge fund CEO who has recently lost his job for workplace impropriety. With alimony payments to meet, he's desperate to maintain his "megabucks Ivy Leaguer lifestyle", and to keep his "spoilt" family in the style to which they've become accustomed. So he resorts to robbing his rich neighbours in upstate New York, only to discover that "what happens behind those white picket fences is even murkier than he imagined". The likeable Coop is essentially "Robin Hood in a Ralph Lauren cap", who retains our sympathy even as he pilfers luxury goods from the drawers of his "minted and smugly punchable" victims. The question is: for how long can he get away with it?
The show is in no hurry to let us know, said Dan Einav in the Financial Times. Subplots abound, and while those featuring Coop's "rueful" ex-wife Mel (Amanda Peet) enrich the narrative, others are "unnecessary" and sometimes turn a "promising" premise into a "lethargic" slog.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
It's all a little formulaic, repeating "familiar tropes" about obnoxious rich people from shows such as "Big Little Lies" and "The White Lotus", said Benji Wilson in The Telegraph. Still, Hamm is "superb" as Coop, and it's all deftly scripted. It may not be "entirely original", but "Your Friends and Neighbors" is "more than sharp enough to get away with it".
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
6 homes with fall foliagefeature An autumnal orange Craftsman, a renovated Greek Revival church and an estate with an orchard
-
Bugonia: ‘deranged, extreme and explosively enjoyable’Talking Point Yorgos Lanthimos’ film stars Emma Stone as a CEO who is kidnapped and accused of being an alien
-
The Revolutionists: a ‘superb and monumental’ bookThe Week Recommends Jason Burke ‘epic’ account of the plane hijackings and kidnappings carried out by extremists in the 1970s
-
Film reviews: ‘Bugonia,’ ‘The Mastermind’ and ‘Nouvelle Vague’feature A kidnapped CEO might only appear to be human, an amateurish art heist goes sideways, and Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Breathless’ gets a lively homage
-
Book reviews: ‘Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity’ and ‘Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice’feature An examination of humanity in the face of “the Machine” and a posthumous memoir from one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, who recently died by suicide
-
The dazzling coral gardens of Raja AmpatThe Week Recommends Region of Indonesia is home to perhaps the planet’s most photogenic archipelago
-
Salted caramel and chocolate tart recipeThe Week Recommends Delicious dessert can be made with any biscuits you fancy
-
6 trailside homes for hikersFeature Featuring a roof deck with skyline views in California and a home with access to private trails in Montana

