Your Friends and Neighbours

Your Friends and Neighbours (2025)


Starring: Aimee Carrero, Amanda Peet, Donavan Colan, Eunice Bae, Hoon Lee, Isabel Marie Gravitt, Jon Hamm, Lena Hall, Mark Tallman, Olivia Munn

Breaking Bad…..ish! But its not!

On my travels, I overheard a couple taking about this show. “Have you seen Friends and Neighbours?” was the question that piqued my interest, the lady asking, totally missing out the “Your” but, hey! small details….

As the reply was “yes!”, I listened on in how much they loved the show and was then puzzled as when I left them, basking in the glory and the handsomeness of Jon Hamm, the last snippet of conversation I heard was “Ooh! Its like Breaking Bad!”. Which got me thinking “No its not!”. I mean there is no blue meth, no drug dealing, no fast food chicken owner crime-king and there is no sign of an everyday teacher embarking on a personal journey to become the new Scarface.

But then, I sort of get what they meant. It does feel like a Walter White moment. A normal family man deciding to earn more money by going down the criminal route, while on the way being introduced to an underworld that threatens more danger in which the right thing to do is to walk away, but the thrill is more exciting than living the normal life.

Hamm plays Coop, a husband with a stunning house, wealth behind his wildest dreams, a rich paid job and a family who adore him. So, why does the show start with Coop waking up in a pool of blood, next to a dead man’s body? Well, as his voiceover tells us, the last four months have been quite a disaster and its time for us to get to see what led to this moment.

Coop’s dream suburban life starts to unravel the moment he catches his wife Mel (Amanda Peet) in bed with best friend, Nick (Mark Tallman) and from there it gets worse. Not only moving out of his family home and then having to watch on in parties as Mel and Nick are embraced as the new happy couple, he then find himself out of a job for reasons we won’t spoil here and then facing seeing his lavish lifestyle disappear before his eyes.

So, what does he do? Well he starts to steal! Breaking into his friends and neighbours homes when they are not at home, stealing valuable items that he is sure that they won’t miss and then selling them on the black market, making friends with pawnshop owner Lu (Randy Danson), who leads him to more shadowy figures, no doubt a plot vice that will be expanded on the already commissioned Season 2. Its all very good and easy money, until it leads to that dead body in the middle of the night…..

As expected, Hamm is delightful as the leading man and the shows biggest strength is the characters who we grow to really like, with Peet excelling as the ex-wife who really can’t let go of the past and there is great support from the likes of Olivia Munn’s Sam, a fellow divorcee who occasionally shares Coop’s bed and housekeeper Elena (Aimee Carrero), whose life could not be more different to those around her, but still gets caught up in the mess unfolding.

With a lot to watch on TV these days, Your Friends and Neighbours is most likely my favourite show of 2025. Its captivating and funny and its hard not to root for Coop, even more as we get to know him, his relationship with his sister Ali (Lena Hall) who suffers from Bipolar is another added strength to the many juicy storylines that hopefully could go down the Breaking Bad path of getting more darker as each season progress….

Damn….there’s that comparison again! Its nothing like Breaking Bad…..but then again…..!?

All episodes of YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS are now streaming on APPLE TV