David Farnor | On 13, Apr 2025

Jon Hamm. A name so synonymous with Mad Men that when he hosted SNL years ago, they had a running joke that he’d always been playing Don Draper in every role of his career. Here, finally, is another humdinger of a part, although it might not seem that way at first. Your Friends & Neighbors sees Hamm play – yes – a high-earning business suit in rich suburbia. But things take a turn for the more interesting – within an hour, Andrew “Coop” Cooper is out of a job. Oh, and we’ve had a flashforward glimpse of him next to a dead body.

Coop is a hedge fund manager whose decision to hook up with a younger colleague gets him fired and blacklisted. At home, he’s divorced from Mel (Amanda Peet), who is now living in his old house with new boyfriend Nick (Mark Tallman) – an NBA champ and also Coop’s former close friend, until Mel left him for Nick. His kids – Hunter (Donovan Colan) and Tori (Isabel Gravitt) – aren’t that interested in him, but mostly want to get on with their lives and stay out of the mess.

The mess, though, is only just beginning, as Coop continues to try and keep up appearances, still driving his Maserati to his rental home while not being able to get another job. With money looking tight, he gets desperate – and starts robbing his neighbours. It’s a great little concept for a drama, one that finds just the right balance between satire and soap opera. On the one hand, Coop hates what his life has become, but also resents his urge to get it back to what it was. On the other hand, everyone around him is so wealthy they don’t miss half their belongings anyway. Caught between terrible people and terrible people, we’re left to sympathise and root for Coop’s sudden anti-consumerist streak, without fully loving the guy.

The more Coop steals, the more he unearths the scandals behind the glossy surface – and so Your Friends & Neighbors joins the long line of traditional picket-fence programming, as it peels back the surface of Westmont Village to reveal the corruption underneath. From affairs to drugs, he ends up stealing secrets as much as pricey watches and spenny bottles of wine – all of which is itemised playfully by on-screen title cards offering pricing details.

It only works because the ensemeble are convincing, from Amanda Peet unleashing pent-up anger to Olivia Munn as Mel’s friend, secretly sleeping with Coop and struggling not to become attached, and Lena Hall as Coop’s sister, Ali, a troubled musician. But there’s no doubt that Jon Hamm is the star of the show, and he’s clearly relishing the opportunity to bring his suave, brooding charisma to the part of the conflicted Coop. “If you’re in the market for metaphors, look no further than a man vomiting into a $30,000 toilet that isn’t connected to any plumbing,” he wryly observes in the way that only Jon Hamm can.

The script verges into overwritten at times, as Coop gives us a voiceover to guide us through the thorny maze of juggled tones, but Hamm’s performance is more than enough to make this sharp dissection of midlife privilege and malaise an entertaining, compulsive watch. Hamm’s back.

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