With so many true-crime anthologies, prestige dramas, and gritty procedurals competing for attention on streaming, it’s easy to overlook something genuinely fresh. On Apple TV, the darkly funny crime series Your Friends & Neighbors is exactly that. The show stars Jon Hamm as a wealthy man whose once-perfect life implodes in spectacular fashion, leading to him turning to crime just to stay afloat.
But this isn’t Breaking Bad, Ozark, or another “rich people behaving badly” story like The White Lotus. With a clever premise, unpredictable twists, and a surprisingly sympathetic protagonist in Hamm’s Andrew “Coop” Cooper, Your Friends & Neighbors stands apart. Apple TV has already renewed it for Season 2, making now the perfect time to catch up on one of the smartest and funniest crime shows of the year — and the best one you’re probably not watching.
What Is Apple TV’s ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ About?
In Your Friends & Neighbors, Jon Hamm plays Andrew “Coop” Cooper, a hedge-fund manager whose life self-destructs after he’s unceremoniously fired and can’t get hired anywhere else. His personal life is already in ruins after his marriage to Mel (Amanda Peet) collapses when he catches her in bed with his friend, retired NBA player Nick (Mark Tallman). That betrayal drives an even deeper wedge between Coop and his two teenage children. His on-again, off-again relationship with another neighbor, Sam (Olivia Munn), isn’t much better as she’s in the middle of her own messy divorce. And through it all, Coop looks after his younger sister, Ali (Lena Hall), a free-spirited musician who lives with mental illness.
Stripped of his identity, career, and the life he once built, Coop grows desperate to maintain appearances and take care of the people he loves. Surrounded by obscene wealth in a neighborhood that feels completely insulated, he realizes how easy it would be to take the many luxury items that rich people like him had without them even realizing those very items were missing. So he starts robbing them, setting off a quiet but escalating crime spree. Coop knows he’d never be suspected, and that only makes the temptation harder to resist. In the wrong hands, a character like this could feel unlikable, but Hamm’s performance makes it easy to sympathize with him even as he spirals deeper into moral chaos.
What makes Your Friends & Neighbors stand out isn’t just its premise, but the way it tells its story. It opens with Coop waking up next to a dead, bloodied body — a flash-forward that instantly hooks the audience before jumping back in time to show how he got there. The structure builds tension while charting Coop’s moral unraveling, his escalating crimes, and the dangerous secrets he uncovers about the people living around him. As the series unfolds, it becomes clear that the truths he discovers in his neighbors’ homes may be even more dangerous than his crimes. The series also benefits from an outstanding ensemble, with Hamm at the helm for a very different kind of crime drama.
Jon Hamm’s ‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ Character Is Nothing Like ‘Mad Men’s Don Draper
Jon Hamm’s Coop beaten up in Your Friends & Neighbors Season 1Image via Apple TV+
While the crime drama remains one of TV’s most reliable genres, it’s hard to stand out by simply playing it straight. What makes Your Friends & Neighbors unique is how it leans into dark comedy, even in its most dramatic moments. For Jon Hamm, this marks his first lead TV role since Mad Men, the series that made him a household name as a serious dramatic actor. But over the years, through his Saturday Night Live appearances and scene-stealing turns in comedies like Bridesmaids, Hamm has proven he’s just as gifted with humor as he is with intensity.
Here, he brings both sides of his talent together. Coop may share Don Draper’s sense of regret and self-destruction, but he’s a far cry from the suave, composed ad man that defined Hamm’s career. Coop is impulsive, self-sabotaging, and often ridiculous, and Hamm isn’t afraid to lean into his vulnerability or his comedic instincts. The result is a performance that’s both deeply human and unexpectedly funny and one that turns the familiar crime-drama formula into something entirely its own. As Hamm told Collider earlier this year, the goal was never to make Coop a criminal mastermind, and that choice is exactly what makes Your Friends & Neighbors feel so refreshing.
Jon Hamm’s Crime Dramedy Series Strikes an Impressive Tonal Balance
That balance of humor and darkness is also what sets the show apart tonally. After a successful first season, showrunner Jonathan Tropper also spoke about the future of Coop and his story, confirming that it won’t follow the typical antihero blueprint seen in shows like Breaking Bad. “Coop is never gonna become a criminal kingpin,” Tropper explained. “We’re not going down the Walter White road… What it is about is the risk and reward ratio — what it takes both to make him feel alive and to do what he tells himself is his exit strategy.”
That difference in perspective is what gives the series its edge. Your Friends & Neighbors isn’t really about power or greed, but more a reflection of how the “1%” live and a sharp commentary on modern privilege. Coop may start out as a self-described jerk, but over time he becomes more self-aware, if not exactly redeemed. He’s got an expensive life to maintain, and in his mind, the other rich jerks he’s stealing from hardly count as victims. It’s a timely look at wealth, morality, and self-deception, which feels especially relevant in today’s world.
With Your Friends & Neighbors already renewed for Season 2, there’s no better time to catch up. Whether you’re a longtime Jon Hamm fan, a follower of Jonathan Tropper’s work on Warrior or Banshee, or simply love a smart, character-driven crime story, this show won’t disappoint. Your Friends & Neighbors proves that even in a genre as crowded as the crime drama, there’s still room for something original, and for Hamm, it’s a reminder that his best work may be happening right now.
