Rich people have problems too—and Your Friends & Neighbors wants viewers to really, truly care about them, via the story of a New York hedge fund manager whose downward spiral lets him recognize the emptiness of his upper-crust suburban existence and compels him to rob acquaintances of their prized possessions.
A midlife-crisis saga in an American Beauty vein, albeit with more burglaries and less quasi-pedophilic desire, Jonathan Tropper’s drama, premiering April 11 on Apple TV+, tries with only moderate success to elicit empathy for its malaise-stricken moneyed characters. Nonetheless, even its shakiest moments are elevated by a sterling Jon Hamm and equally captivating Amanda Peet—the latter giving a career-best performance—as exes attempting to survive, and to some extent escape, a materialistic prison of their own making.
Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Hamm) is a man who, from an early age, sought to have it all, and by the time he reached his 40s, he had it: a thriving career alongside boss Jack (Corbin Bernsen); an enormous mansion; a swanky Maserati; a country club membership; and a fantastic family in wife Mel (Peet), tennis star daughter Tori (Isabel Gravitt), and musician son Hunter (Donovan Colan).
So busy was Coop prioritizing his ambition over everything else, though, that Mel fled into the arms of former NBA All-Star Nick (Mark Tallman), who now lives in the house for which Coop is still financially responsible. At the outset of Your Friends & Neighbors, he loses his career as well, courtesy of a fling with Olivia (Kitty Hawthorne), a younger woman whom he learns works at his firm—a no-no that gives Jack the chance he needs to push Coop out, leaving him jobless and tainted by a sexual-misconduct scandal that sabotages his prospects.
Having spent his initial four-plus decades ceaselessly striving, Coop now finds himself stuck in a rut, which is precisely what he can’t afford—figuratively and literally, considering the enormous costs of maintaining his lifestyle. Fretting over a home renovation project that’s insanely over-budget thanks to his wife (who just bought him a Rolls Royce Spectre that’s priced at upwards of $400,000), Coop’s business manager and best friend Barney (Hoon Lee) is well aware that insolvency in this wealthy enclave is a death knell, and he’s thus worried about his top client hitting the skids.
At least Coop receives some respite from his woes via an ongoing fling with Sam (Olivia Munn), who’s in the midst of a nasty divorce from her diner-mogul husband Paul (Jordan Gelber). He also has an unexpected but welcome guest in his relatively modest new digs in the form of mentally unstable sister Ali (Lena Hall), whose past debilitating breakdown occurred on the day she was supposed to wed her now-married beau Bruce (Ramin Karimloo).
Tropper knows this ritzy Northeast milieu, where everyone is obsessed with status and appearances, and Your Friends & Neighbors authentically conveys its insularity and superficiality. The thing is, audiences know it too, from the legions of similar movies and TV shows that luxuriate in American affluence before revealing that, deep down, it’s less fulfilling and meaningful than family, friendship, and love.
The series’ main idea is having Coop comprehend that the things which matter most aren’t cars or homes but Mel, Tori, and Hunter, whom he’d lost sight of in his race to the capitalist mountaintop, and yes, it’s as groan-worthy as it sounds. While the 1 percent certainly have their share of legitimate troubles, the material strains mightily to render Coop’s epiphany—and the regret it inspires—original, much less affecting.
Fortunately, Your Friends & Neighbors has Hamm at the top of his game as the struggling hedge fund hotshot. His frustration and desperation mounting in increasingly amusing ways—and peaking early, when he discovers Tori and her boyfriend Jake (Daniel Dale) undressed and responds by punching the boy in the crotch—the actor continues to prove that he’s a master at blending suave cool with morose turmoil and sarcastic hostility.
His Coop is such a charismatic mess that it’s easy to overlook the somewhat clichéd nature of his circumstances (and attendant inner-monologue narration). He’s a walking disaster with whom no one wants to spend time, and he becomes even more interesting when he reacts to his woes by going full cat burglar, stealing valuables—each one described in sardonic TV-commercial style—from nearby families.
Coop gets involved with an intimidating Bronx fence (Randy Danson), a crooked art dealer (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson), and a maid (Aimee Carrero) who’s eager to partner on his illicit scheme, and as hinted at by the proceedings’ maiden scene, his situation goes from bad to worse when he stumbles upon a dead body.
Your Friends & Neighbors is adeptly and playfully plotted, and if Craig Gillespie’s direction of the first two episodes is typically flashy (full of rapid-fire montages and slow-motion), the show moves swiftly and is frequently witty.
Much of the credit for its watchability, however, goes to its charming cast, led by Peet as a woman whose cheery, picture-perfect façade masks a craving for transgression—an impulse that manifests itself first modestly with car-keying, and later pushes her back toward Coop. Inhabiting Mel as a complicated and conflicted human being rather than the stereotype she outwardly resembles, Peet is surprising, nuanced, and altogether magnetic, both on her own and opposite Hamm, with whom she shares intense chemistry.
Because Peet and Hamm are a dynamic estranged couple, and Munn and Lee are solid supporting players, Your Friends & Neighbors is routinely engaging, regardless of the fact that what it has to say about dreams and satisfaction are old hat and underwhelming. Better yet, Tropper eventually moves past such homilies for intriguing murder mystery once Detective Lin (Sandrine Holt) begins investigating the homicide and discovers that all roads lead to Coop.
Tangling the protagonist up in knots helps the show avoid inertia and affords Hamm with plentiful opportunities to fume, joke, lament, and fight like hell to recapture that which he most covets. Irrespective of the series’ intermittent clunkiness, he and Peet make these unhappy and reckless Richie Richs company worth keeping.
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