Hamm burglar on the loose

‘Your Friends Neighbors’ finds Jon Hamm reprising his Don Draper. But is his charisma enough, asks Nick Hilton

- Nick Hilton

“Things fall apart,” the Irish poet WB Yeats wrote in his 1919 poem “The Second Coming”. “Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” All epochs move, inexorably, towards decline, and so too, apparently, all happy lives. That’s the premise of half the television put out into the world – a good life, ruined – not least the new Apple TV+ crime saga Your Friends & Neighbors, which shows the American dream going up in smoke.

Andrew “Coop” Cooper (Jon Hamm) has the perfect life: a beautiful family, a palace in the suburbs, a job at a hedge fund that pays handsomely. Almost overnight, he loses everything. His wife, Mel (Amanda Peet), runs off with one of his best friends, athletics mogul Nick (Mark Tallman), and Coop finds himself living in a rental with his bipolar sister, Ali (Lena Hall). To add to his struggles, he loses his job – and a big pot of money – after a one-night stand with a colleague. But the alimony cheques still have to be written and the Maserati’s not going to refuel itself. “I just want to know how long I could float on what I’ve got,” he asks his friend, and business manager, Barney (Hoon Lee). The answer is “not long” – that is until Coop realises that he has access to all the luxury items stored, oh so carelessly, in the houses of his country club peers.

Regular men pushed into a life of crime is a subgenre of its own. Accountant turned money launderer (