Your Friends & Neighbours (season 1)

If you take Jon Hamm (Don Draper from Mad Men), use Queen of Fucking Everything as the foundation, and marinate the whole thing in the world of Billions, you end up with the excellent Your Friends & Neighbours.

The title may be absolutely terrible, but Jonathan Tropper, known from Banshee and Warrior, has managed to create a highly engaging series that borrows elements from both film noir and the superficial world of Hollywood-style wealth and privilege. The events, however, take place around New York City.

Andrew “Coop” Cooper’s life is going terribly: he has just gone through a shitty divorce, and shortly afterwards his brilliant career is rewarded with a firing. Once a wealthy businessman, he has now lost almost everything — and things are about to get even worse. Before that, however, we return to a point that serves as the springboard for a kind of Fight Club twist.

From there, a compelling chain of events gets underway, carried by strong casting, snappy dialogue and a certain cynicism towards the prevailing worldview. The series brings Queen of Fucking Everything to mind in many ways, but with less comedy and surrounded by much, much richer people. There are, of course, differences as well, but there is little point in discussing them because of spoilers.

This series obviously won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it had me firmly in its grip and kept me hooked. The season also ends on such an intriguing note that I’m already looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Link: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30459041/reference/