Your Friends and Neighbours: Jon Hamm stars in 'frothily fun' black comedy
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.
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".