1 week ago
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Your Friends and Neighbours (season two) ★★★★
It’s hard not to lean into the easy comparison with this dramedy about a regular guy drawn to a life of crime in middle age: it is indeed Breaking Bad with better, or at least more expensive, clothes and drugs. But in its second season, hedge fund manager-turned burglar Andrew Cooper (Jon Hamm) is much more interested in breaking good. If only circumstances would allow it.
Coop’s life has improved a little since the nadir of the first season, in which his friends and neighbours in ritzy Westmont Village (a fictionalised version of Westchester County, north of Manhattan) shunned him after he was sacked from his firm for having an affair with a young co-worker.
With his financial stocks at a low, a massive monthly maintenance bill for ex-wife Mel (Amanda Peet), their two kids and their stately home to take care of, not to mention a penchant for the finer things in life, what choice did the poor fellow have but to rob the homes of those who had spurned him?
But just as things seem to be settling into the new normal – he’s been acquitted of murder, former lover Sam (Olivia Munn) is forgiven for framing him, and even Mel and Sam have patched things up – a new kid arrives in town and threatens to blow everything up again.
Owen Ashe (James Marsden) is a charming, smarmy, dashingly handsome and staggeringly rich shipping magnate who in very short order snaps up the area’s most expensive house, sweeps Sam off her feet, and makes Coop an offer he can’t refuse after catching him in the act of stealing a first edition copy of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth.
Ashe inveigles his way into Westmont life by throwing lavish parties, laces his guests’ drinks with MDMA, and carries himself with outrageous confidence to match his outrageous fortune. As he says of himself, “even my swagger has swagger”. As others note, he’s like a modern-day Jay Gatsby – with a past that’s every bit as murky.
There’s so much to enjoy in this show, with its real estate porn, rolling lawns, designer clothes and luxury cars. And who can’t take pleasure in seeing the 1 per cent cut down to size a little (except, perhaps, the 1 per cent). Hamm’s voiceover narration is sometimes a little clunky, as if the writers had lost faith in the “show-don’t-tell” maxim and were trying to make sure we didn’t miss the existential crisis afflicting our main man. But overall, the series does a decent job of balancing the comedic excess with the dramatic weight of its underlying concerns.
For me, though, the bigger question is just how committed creator Jonathan Tropper and his writing team really are to those concerns. Ennui, peri-menopause, the relentless pursuit of material success to the detriment of personal fulfilment: I mean, sure, these are worthwhile topics. But it’s hard to feel too sorry for a guy whose fall from grace means he has to park his Maserati in the driveway of a really nice rental rather than the family home he’s still paying and pining for.
It’s world’s-smallest-violin stuff, really. But obviously, a very expensive one. Stradivarius, likely. No doubt Coop will have his eye on it.
Your Friends and Neighbours streams on Fridays on Apple TV+, until June 5.
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