‘Radically completely different from every other present’

Jon Hamm excels in Apple TV+’s “emotionally actual however absurdist” drama a few determined company man who resorts to stealing from his neighbours.

Jon Hamm has his greatest function since Mad Males and brings all his sharp comedian timing and dramatic nuance to it as Andrew Cooper, generally known as Coop, a hedge-fund supervisor who loses his job and manoeuvres to keep up his elaborate way of life and sense of himself. When you took Don Draper and dropped him into 2025 he may be Coop, a company man with a damaged marriage and two teenaged youngsters, an honest man and a charmer with all-around unhealthy judgement. Your Mates and Neighbors is emotionally actual and affecting but additionally absurdist and humorous, a uncommon mixture.

The present begins with Coop waking up in a pool of blood subsequent to a person’s lifeless physique within the lobby of a neighbour’s mansion. He cleans up the blood – a foul transfer – and in one of many many mordant voiceovers that run by means of the sequence, appears to be like again 4 months to replicate on “the swirling sizzling mess of my life”. His worst selection is changing his misplaced revenue by stealing loot from mates so wealthy they will by no means miss it. The robberies are the comedian vein within the story, but additionally a Malicious program for its drama. Coop is harm and distraught over the lack of his marriage, however that theme exists subsequent to the caper-like thefts. The sequence is edgier and smarter than its entertaining floor suggests, because it deftly takes on problems with household, class privilege, vapid materialism and poisonous masculinity.

Like most sequence, this might begin a bit sooner, because it units up the life Coop is accustomed to in a suburban New York neighborhood of big homes and nation golf equipment, the place $200,000 vehicles and $60,000 donations to charity are strange. That was his life till he discovered his spouse Mel (Amanda Peet) in mattress along with his so-called good friend, Nick (Mark Tallman), a former basketball star nonetheless in nice form. The divorce has despatched Coop out of his expansive house right into a smaller rental home close by. 

However quickly sufficient the primary episode will get to its boldest flip as we see why Coop misplaced his job. A girl who works at his agency, whom he has by no means met and who would not report back to him, comes on to him in a bar. Months later, that consensual hookup results in his being fired for violating the corporate’s HR guidelines. Popular culture has at instances gingerly dipped a toe into the theme of sexual harassment. On The Morning Present, Steve Carell’s character, a poisonous predator, was despatched off a cliff to die. However there was nothing as sophisticated as this. The present would not deny Coop’s unhealthy judgement but additionally makes it clear by means of the girl herself and Coop’s ruthless boss that the HR rule was a handy excuse to eliminate him whereas protecting his shoppers. The present would not go far past that in exploring the difficulty, but it surely units up the sequence’ advanced realism about social requirements. 

A non-compete clause makes Coop unhireable, however he insists on maintaining appearances. His burglaries are handled like adventures, punctuated by mock adverts as he describes the posh objects he is lifting, with voiceovers that slyly echo Hamm’s in all these Mercedes-Benz commercials. “The Patek Phillippe Nautilus: sealed 18-carat white gold…” Coop says, speaking about an merchandise nobody actually wants.

The sequence’ actual energy, although, is in his relationships, most of them pushed by his wounded delight, and the way in which his identification has been tied to his function as a profitable man of the world. Hamm easily navigates the shifts in tone, by no means permitting the humour to flag whereas letting us see the emotional ache Coop will not disclose to anybody round him. There’s quite a lot of residual affection between Coop and his dishonest ex-wife, whom Peet manages to make sympathetic. When Mel worries and asks him what’s improper, he shows a traditional alpha-male incapacity to share emotions. “I am advantageous,” he tells her when clearly he isn’t. Olivia Munn has much less to do as Sam, a divorced neighbour and Coop’s occasional fling. And Lena Corridor is good as Coop’s sister, Ali. Briefly off her meds, she stalks her ex-fiancé, sitting on his garden together with her guitar and singing. Corridor, who gained a Tony for her function within the Broadway revival of Hedwig and the Indignant Inch in 2014, sings sometimes by means of the sequence – an asset, not an intrusion. She makes Ali empathetic, humorous and heat, and the bond between the brother and sister is touching. After she is again on her meds, her romantic subplot means that theirs actually is a household stuffed with unhealthy selections.

A second season of the present has already been ordered, so the query of whether or not Coop pays for his crimes will linger. That plot is an efficient hook, however his resonant emotions and growing self-knowledge set the present aside. At a celebration of male mates hosted by Nick – why is Coop even there? extra unhealthy selections – he appears to be like round on the males who nonetheless have their jobs and cash, and sees the individual he might need turn into. “Their future was already written, and so the hunt to stave off the vacancy started,” he says in voiceover, observing their devotion to “Scotch and cigars”, to “customized golf golf equipment and high-end escorts”. He recognises that there are “whole industries constructed to money in on the quiet desperation of wealthy middle-aged males”. By even acknowledging that desperation, by means of a hero who’s sympathetic – nevertheless wrong-headed his path to self-awareness – Your Mates and Neighbors is radically completely different from every other present round.   

Your Mates and Neighbors is on Apple TV+ from 11 April.