Your Friends and Neighbors: Definitely Worth Getting to Know

Just saw the finale -- the 9th episode -- of the first season of Your Friends and Neighbors on Apple TV+.  I'm saying first season because Apple renewed it for a second season before the first season begun.  A smart move because Your Friends and Neighbors, billed as a comedy-drama, but more a drama with some comical touches about some of the ethical profundities of life -- at least life in the New York City area -- is a tour-de-force of a series in a multiplicity of ways.

Here are some of those (in general non-spoiler) ways:

1. It's easily Jon Hamm's best role and performance since Mad Men.  Indeed, Hamm is so natural and energized in the lead role -- Andrew Cooper aka Coop -- that it could be Coop could equal or even exceed Don Draper.  Time will tell.

2. The rest of the acting is top-notch.  Amanda Peet as Coop's former wife, Olivia Munn as his sometimes lover, even Corbin Bernsen as, well, Coop's despicable boss, a minor role, are all memorable. So are Isabel Gravitt and Donovan Colan as Coop's kids.

3. The essence of the plot:  Coop is fired from his high-stakes financially wheeling-and-dealing job.  He takes up stealing -- literally stealing -- from his neighbors to stay afloat.  As a result of which, he ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, looking guilty for a murder he didn't commit.  Along the way, we meet bevy of compelling characters including his fence; an unlikely but effective partner-in-crime; and a sister with a pretty good voice and some impressive songs (Lena Hall plays Coop's sister, and actually wrote and sings an original song as well as singing the covers -- a nice touch).

I have no idea if the depiction of this upper crust in Your Friends and Neighbors is accurate (I live in the greater New York area, but as a professor I'm not really privy to what goes on in boardrooms and the like).  But that doesn't really matter.   Your Friends and Neighbors is not a documentary, not even a docu-drama.  It's a work of fiction, in which it splendidly succeeds.

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