Susan Granger’s review of “Your Friends and Neighbors” (Apple TV+)
“Mad Men” alum Jon Hamm’s new, nine-episode series “Your Friends and Neighbors” could be subtitled “Lifestyles of the Rich and Miserable.”
As the dark crime caper begins, Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Hamm) is a charming-if-cynical hedge fund executive who gets fired. Adding insult to injury, his wife Mel (Amanda Peet) is having an affair with his best-friend Nick Brandes (Mark Tallman), an NBA legend who has, literally, moved into Coop’s former McMansion.
Disgraced and divorced, aspirational Coop drives around the elite, insulated suburb known as Westmont Village, gazing at his affluent neighbors’ ostentatious display of wealth. That’s when he decides to become a thief.
His first heist involves a Richard Mille Felipe Massa wristwatch, valued at $225,000, followed by a Hermes Birkin bag, worth $50,000. But then larcenous Coop has to ‘fence’ these luxury items, which brings him into the criminal underworld realm of tough pawn-shop owner Lu (Randy Danson).
Meanwhile, Coop moves into a rental home with his mentally unstable, bipolar musician sister Ali (Lena Hall); begins a casual, inevitably ill-fated affair with Mel’s pal, soon-to-be-divorced Samantha Levitt (Olivia Munn); and teams up with his former housekeeper Elena (Aimee Carrero) to acquire more ‘stuff.’
While rummaging through their houses, sampling rare wines like a Domaine d’Auvenay Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru, now-emboldened, judgmental Coop not only discovers his neighbors’ nasty secrets but also finds himself implicated in a gruesome murder as the suspense-filled plot evolves into a whodunit.
Created by Jonathan Tropper, it’s somewhat reminiscent of John Cheever’s short story “The Swimmer” which was made into a 1968 movie in which Burt Lancaster swims across his nouveau riche Connecticut neighbors’ pools, puncturing the façade of their lives.
Successful novelist-turned-screenwriter/director/producer/showrunner Tropper seems fascinated by the contemporary concept of how one can have-it-all one moment and lose-it-all the next.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Your Friends and Neighbors” is an intriguing, entertaining 8, streaming on Apple TV+ and renewed for a second season.
