Jon Hamm can sell anything. That inherent charisma served him well in his breakout role as genius ad executive Don Draper in “Mad Men,” and it carries him through the derivative and underwhelming new Apple TV+ crime drama “Your Friends & Neighbors” — at least for a little while.
Don Draper was a reprehensible person who was nevertheless mesmerizing to watch, thanks in large part to Hamm’s performance, with its layered approach to a ruthless, manipulative character. In “Your Friends & Neighbors,” out April 11, protagonist Andrew “Coop” Cooper is much less complex than Don Draper, but he’s similarly ambitious and affluent, and Hamm gives him a mix of insecurity and swagger that makes him sympathetic despite his substantial wealth and privilege.
That sympathy erodes over the course of the seven episodes provided for review (out of nine total), and it doesn’t extend to Coop’s fellow one-percenters in the supporting cast. Creator Jonathan Tropper casts Coop in the mold of Don Draper’s fellow prestige-TV antihero Walter White of “Breaking Bad,” who gave up his respectable position as a teacher to embrace a life of crime. Coop starts out with far more resources than Walter White, though, and he doesn’t have a cancer diagnosis to shake up his sense of self. His downward spiral begins with losing his job at a high-powered New York City hedge fund after a fling with a younger co-worker.
Coop is divorced, and the liaison was consensual, but his vindictive boss still uses it as an excuse to get rid of him. That lets Coop off the hook while giving the show its justification for propping up an aggrieved middle-aged white guy. Coop doesn’t start cooking meth to make ends meet — instead, he engages in some light breaking and entering, stealing select high-end objects (what he calls “piles of forgotten wealth”) from his rich suburban neighbors and selling them to a shady pawn-shop owner in the Bronx.
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It’s just an exaggerated midlife crisis, and especially in its early episodes, “Your Friends & Neighbors” comes perilously close to “American Beauty: The TV Series,” reflecting the smug condescension of that poorly aged Oscar-winning movie. The first episode opens with a flash-forward to Coop waking up on the floor of one of the neighborhood mansions next to a dead body, but it takes quite a few episodes before the show gets around to clarifying and investigating the murder mystery.
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The intrigue among the idle rich (including Coop’s two teenage children), with their petty grievances and betrayals, expands over the course of the season via various half-hearted subplots that recall the soapy storytelling of 2000s hit “Desperate Housewives,” but the tone is too blandly refined to embrace campy humor or pulpy twists. “Your Friends & Neighbors” also takes its time introducing Coop’s eventual partner in crime, Dominican immigrant housekeeper Elena Benavides (Aimee Carrero), whose participation in the local gossip network of household help brings to mind “Desperate Housewives” creator Marc Cherry’s underrated follow-up, “Devious Maids.”
“Your Friends & Neighbors” is not particularly desperate or devious, though, despite Tropper’s efforts to make the well-documented excesses of the upper class seem somehow scandalous. Coop’s smarmy narration features detailed descriptions of the luxury items he steals, complete with onscreen text, in a way that’s designed to highlight their artificially inflated value, but just sounds like commercials for fancy status symbols. There are no shocking or thrilling revelations, just confirmation that terrible taste transcends class.
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The supporting cast includes Amanda Peet as Coop’s therapist ex-wife and Olivia Munn as the divorcee he’s now sleeping with, but no one else’s story lines make much of an impact, except when they return back to Coop. As a drama about secrets and lies in an upscale community, “Your Friends & Neighbors” is basic and tiresome, just marking time until getting back to Coop’s increasing immersion in the criminal underworld.
There are glimpses of the more exciting, layered show that “Your Friends & Neighbors” could have been, especially when Coop and Elena are working together, challenging each other’s received notions about class and gender. Those moments are far too fleeting, and they lack any urgency or momentum, despite strong chemistry between Hamm and Carrero. The show gives just as much weight to go-nowhere side stories about Coop’s mentally unstable sister hooking up with her ex-fiancé or Coop’s business manager’s financial difficulties as it does to the burgeoning criminal enterprise that’s theoretically at its center.
The primary theme of “Your Friends & Neighbors” boils down to “What if a rich guy was slightly less rich?,” and that’s just not enough to sustain an entire season (let alone the second season that Apple has already ordered). The opening credits sequence, featuring elements of Coop’s life literally blowing up around him, set to a song with lyrics about “keeping up with the Joneses,” encapsulates the show’s blunt, superficial take on its subject matter. Jon Hamm can sell anything, but even he has trouble making this lazy, warmed-over salaciousness appealing.
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YOUR FRIENDS & NEIGHBORS
Starring: Jon Hamm, Aimee Carrero, Amanda Peet, Olivia Munn. On Apple TV+