Jon Hamm is back on prestige television. That sentence alone carries weight. Ten years after Mad Men left a Don Draper-shaped hole in the hearts of TV drama fans everywhere, Hamm has returned not with a brooding ad executive, but with something arguably more 2020s in flavor: a disgraced hedge fund manager grasping for relevance, wealth, and redemption amid the manicured absurdity of upper-class suburbia. In Your Friends & Neighbours, Hamm headlines his first lead role in a drama series since Mad Men, and while the actor himself remains magnetic, the series never quite settles on what it wants to be.
Is it a satire? A mystery-thriller? A soap opera for the 1%? The show teases each identity without committing fully to any. What it does achieve, however, is a slick, stylish, and often very funny dive into financial ruin, privilege, and midlife crisis, wrapped in a glossy Apple TV+ package.
Your Friends & Neighbours
We meet Andrew Cooper (Jon Hamm) at rock bottom—bloodied, disoriented, and splayed out on the marble floor of his opulent Westmont Village mansion. The scene is so visually stylized and ironically detached it could be ripped from Dynasty or Big Little Lies. Cue the voiceover: Cooper begins narrating his descent, and we’re instantly invited to time-jump backward and uncover the layered downfall that led to this violent climax.
Two years post-divorce and newly unemployed after being fired over a minor HR misstep, Cooper finds himself still living among the ultra-rich but without the income to support it. His ex-wife Mel (Amanda Peet) has moved on emotionally, if not entirely financially. His kids live elsewhere. His former best friend, Nick (Mark Tallman), now occupies a more intimate position in Mel’s life, thanks to an affair that ended the marriage.
Despite losing his firm, his marriage, and eventually his home, Cooper still has his Maserati and his pride—until survival instincts take over. Enter a life of white-collar thievery, where every gaudy McMansion in his social circle holds enough unattended luxury items to keep a fallen finance bro afloat for just a little longer.
The show smartly echoes The White Lotus in tone and structure. Like HBO’s viral sensation, Your Friends & Neighboursis obsessed with the rich and the ridiculous. It bathes in golden light, captures endless pools, sprawling lawns, and immaculately dressed people with toxic secrets and petty dramas. Unlike White Lotus, however, this show feels less sharp in its critique. While it flirts with satire, it too often indulges the wealth it’s meant to be skewering.
The absurdity is there—references to crushed oyster shells for private petanque courts and designer watches stashed like candy—but the show lacks the full-throated social commentary that could give its narrative teeth.
Hamm is, without question, the engine of the series. He is effortlessly charming as Cooper, a man both bewildered and emboldened by his collapse. This is a modern masculinity tale with layers: unlike Don Draper, Cooper actually wants to be a good father. He tries to maintain emotional honesty. But he’s still driven by ego, by materialism, and by an American Dream redefined by leveraged portfolios and quiet luxury.
Olivia Munn is a standout as Samantha, Mel’s friend and Cooper’s secret romantic interest. She brings complexity and mystery to a character who could’ve easily been a cliché. Amanda Peet, too, delivers as the emotionally weary Mel, whose chemistry with Hamm suggests years of intimacy soured by mutual disappointment.
The show’s greatest weakness lies in its structural indecision. There’s a fascinating soap opera here—a Desperate Housewives for the Hamptons set—with enough drama to sink yachts. There’s also the potential for a biting social satire about modern capitalism, privilege, and collapse. Then again, it occasionally plays like a psychological thriller, teasing a deeper mystery around the bloodied opening.
But Your Friends & Neighbours refuses to pick a lane. The pacing is uneven, with long stretches between the juicy reveals. The secrets don’t tangle together tightly enough to reward close viewing. Instead of a rich tapestry, we get disparate threads that only sometimes intersect.
What if the show had embraced its soapier instincts? The groundwork is there: betrayals, affairs, double lives, criminal ventures. A more confident embrace of melodrama might have yielded something deliciously addictive.
Or what if it had gone the opposite way—stripped down the comedy and leaned into the thriller aspects? A cat-and-mouse game between Cooper and law enforcement, or a reckoning with his former colleagues, could’ve created genuine suspense.
Or—most tantalizingly—what if the show had committed to a bold, incisive satire of the 1%? There are flickers of this when Cooper and his former maid begin working together. The class commentary is sharp, but far too brief. The writers seem hesitant to offend the very people they’re writing about.
Your Friends & Neighbours is far from a failure. It’s watchable, often delightful, and buoyed by a central performance that reminds us why Jon Hamm became a household name in the first place. But it’s also a show that doesn’t quite trust its audience—or itself—enough to go all in on any of its many compelling possibilities.
In the end, the series feels like a talented actor’s triumphant return that deserved a better vehicle. It’s fun. It’s sleek. It’s entertaining. But it leaves you wishing Hamm had waited just a little longer—and chosen a project brave enough to meet his considerable talents.
