In 'Your Friends & Neighbors,' Jon Hamm is back in Don Draper territory

In “Your Friends and Neighbors,” premiering Friday connected Apple TV+, Jon Hamm plays Andrew Cooper, called Coop, a well-paid, well-placed hedge money trader who is fired from his job, ostensibly for violating a institution argumentation astir fraternization successful the ranks. He has already mislaid his wife, Mel (Amanda Peet), whom helium discovered successful furniture with his champion friend, Nick (Mark Tallman), a three-time NBA champ. And he’s not doing truthful good with his kids — Princeton-bound Tori (Isabel Gravitt), who plays tennis, and precocious schoolhouse sophomore Hunter (Donovan Colan), who plays the drums. What they person successful communal is simply a nonaccomplishment to communicate.

Coop and Mel and each their affluent friends and neighbors unrecorded successful an exclusive assemblage determination successful the commutable vicinity of New York City. To support this entangled beingness successful balance, Coop is sleeping with Sam (Olivia Munn), whose hubby has near her for a overmuch younger model. One imagines that akin concern goes connected conscionable beyond the bounds of this series.

Though removed from the household — he’s moved retired of his large fancy location into an unfancy rental (“It’s small, but don’t worry, it’s besides depressing”) — Coop is inactive supporting them successful the benignant to which helium worked for years to accustom them. (“When is it enough?” helium wonders of their worldly advantages.) It doesn’t assistance that he’s keeping his firing a secret, that helium can’t find different enactment successful his tract and that his aged brag Jack (Corbin Bernson) is sitting connected wealth Coop regards arsenic his (one would accidental rightly). But lying, its complications and consequences, is, aft all, cardinal to play and comedy, which could not get on without characters who are reluctant to archer the truth.

There is thing old-fashioned astir these folks and their powerfulness relations, including Coop’s determination that he’d alternatively bargain than admit he’s retired of enactment — toxic antheral insecurity. Mel gets a country oregon 2 to amusement that she has a job, arsenic a teen therapist, and 1 insignificant quality is described arsenic the champion defence lawyer successful New York, but the pistillate characters — wives and ex-wives — travel crossed for the astir portion arsenic subordinate to and babelike upon men. Still, everybody, antheral and female, mostly conscionable hangs out, astatine the horribly costly state club, by the pool, connected the links, connected the tennis court, astatine the gym (Nick owns one), astatine yoga, astatine self-defense people and astatine galore parties — which is not to accidental they’re having immoderate fun.

At 1 of these parties, with the guests outside, Coop goes rooting astir his host’s house. He comes upon a cache of costly watches and pockets an highly invaluable one, a signifier he’ll repetition successful different houses, with their “piles of forgotten wealthiness lying astir successful drawers doing nary 1 immoderate good.” (He is processing a jaundiced presumption of luxury items.) At this constituent the bid feels arsenic if it mightiness beryllium heading into John Cheever territory — thing similar his abbreviated communicative “The Swimmer,” astir a antheral crossing Westchester County by mode of his neighbors’ pools, but with robbery.

Jon Hamm, Amanda Peet and Mark Tallman play wealthy, state club-going characters successful “Your Friends & Neighbors.”

(Apple)

A wont becomes a benignant of livelihood, arsenic Coop turns his loot into cash. This brings him into interaction with immoderate unsafe characters, astatine which constituent “Breaking Bad” seems the applicable comparison. There’s a consciousness successful which the concern is retired of his control, but, helium admits to the viewer, “Maybe I was conscionable liking it.”

Ensuring that you won’t person to enactment retired immoderate of the series’ themes for yourself, narrator Coop sounds a small similar Joan Didion. “Out here, scotch was similar a f—ing religion; each clip idiosyncratic poured you a portion they’d person to springiness a f—ing Ted Talk astir the scotch, and past idiosyncratic would inevitably chime successful astir immoderate vessel they erstwhile had you couldn’t get anymore and blah blah. I deliberation astatine immoderate constituent it conscionable started to dawn connected everyone that this was it; these houses, these wives, these jobs, this would beryllium the sum full of their lives. Their futures were already written, and truthful the quest to stave disconnected the emptiness began; scotch, cigars, smoked meats, customized play clubs, high-end escorts, full industries built to currency successful connected the quiescent desperation of affluent middle-aged men.”

As has go excessively communal practice, “Your Friends and Neighbors” opens with an breathtaking country of situation earlier shifting backmost successful clip to amusement however we get there. Like a small amusement called “The White Lotus,” determination is an unidentified dormant body, promising unit to come, and rather perchance the police. Well, you mightiness expect them anyhow successful a amusement astir stealing things.

There is nary truly desirable outcome, from a sympathetic viewer’s standpoint, different than Coop and Mel reuniting, due to the fact that everything that points toward that extremity is satisfying and astir everything that points distant from it is … annoying. (At the aforesaid time, I ne'er felt emotionally invested successful the result, just, you know, intellectually.) The series’ aggregate threads — including 1 focused connected Barney (Hoon Lee), Coop’s fiscal advisor, who is dealing with his wife’s renovation plans and his disapproving old-world Korean in-laws (Barney is Korean but doesn’t talk the language) — instrumentality vigor distant from the plotline we’re meant to attraction astir about. But they bash capable up abstraction successful a communicative stretched to 9 hours.

As a supposedly palmy antheral undergoing a spiritual crisis, Hamm is backmost successful Don Draper territory. (“I realized however acold you could drift distant from your ain beingness without really going anywhere.”) But Don was ne'er the astir absorbing idiosyncratic successful “Mad Men,” and Coop is little compelling than Mel, and his sister, Ali (Tony victor Lena Hall), who has intelligence wellness issues, and whom we conscionable connected the tract of her erstwhile fiancé, strumming a guitar and singing Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees.” (Hunter’s set performs Matthew Sweet’s “Sick of Myself” — “In a satellite that’s disfigured and a prevarication / It’s hard to adjacent privation to try” — to further underscore the suburban anomie successful song.) As Elena, a young Dominican housekeeper who falls successful with Coop successful his misadventures, Aimee Carrero provides needed people and taste variation.

Only 7 episodes were made disposable for review, truthful I truly don’t cognize what destiny creator Jonathan Tropper (“Banshee”) has successful store for his folks. I accidental the characters whitethorn beryllium thrown into a spread they request to crawl retired of, oregon near hanging from a cliff astatine the season’s end, but to the grade that this is simply a story, with a shape, alternatively than simply a bid of events, it isn’t screaming for different 9 (or aggregate of nine) episodes to reason its business, to marque its points. I could surely basal to spot much of Ali/Hall, it’s true. Still, I’d similar these radical to get it unneurotic sooner than later.