Arts & Culture

Your Friends and Neighbors
Where: Apple TV+
What: Miniseries, nine episodes, 55 mins.
When: Two episodes Fri., April 11; new episodes Fridays
Genre: Drama
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Why you should watch: Jon Hamm is back playing a compelling scoundrel who resorts to stealing from his rich neighbours, exposing more about the elite than just where their silverware is hidden in the process.

 Jon Hamm is back playing the sexy, stylish scoundrel in Your Friends and Neighbors, a role that sees him going Don Draper dark, picking up the pieces after a metaphorical lost weekend.

In this Apple TV+ series. Hamm, in his best role in years, plays Andrew “Coop” Cooper, a hedge fund manager who bumbles his way into a being the predator in a Me Too moment, loses his job and resorts to robbing his rich neighbours to attempt to maintain his lifestyle and keep his fall from grace secret from family and friends. Amanda Peet is strong as Coop’s ex-wife who has remained in the magnificent family home with the pair’s two teenage children and her new partner, an ex-NBA player Nick Brandes (Mark Tallman).

No longer entitled and powerful, Coop is forced to interact with and even understand people, from housekeepers to hoodlums, long invisible to him from his privileged perch. Hamm masterfully plays the wounded Wall Street warrior as he adapts and struggles to keep his head above the financial waters that seek to consume him. Like a noir detective, Hamm gives gritty, world-weary voiceover narration that reveals the tortured thinking that consumes him as he tries not to be consumed by his collapsing world. Tense, titillating and wryly amusing, Friends and Neighbors is another solid, quality production from Apple TV+.

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The Studio
Where: Apple TV+
What: Miniseries, 10 episodes, 30 mins
When: Now, with new episodes Wednesdays
Genre: Comedy
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Why you should watch: Seth Rogen as producer Matt Remick insightfully channels every producer he has ever dealt with, good and bad, in this insider’s look at Hollywood filmmaking. It’s Cringe Comedy at its best with star-studded cameos, including Ron Howard, Sarah Polley, Steve Buscemi and more, and where the looks behind the Hollywood curtain are credible and cutting. Catherine O’Hara is masterful as Patty Leigh, Remick’s foil as a recently fired studio head with a beef.

A Thousand Blows
Where: Disney+
What: Miniseries, 6 episodes, 50 mins
When: Now
Genre: Drama
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Why you should watch: The team behind the blood- and sweat-soaked series Peaky Blinders is back with an equally gritty look at bare-knuckle boxing and street crime in Victorian East End London. Two brothers, Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) and Alec Munroe (Francis Lovehall), fresh off the boat from Jamaica, turn to boxing as a way to survive in an unwelcoming city and country. The two brothers meet Mary Carr (Erin Doherty), who leads the female crime gang The Forty Elephants and helps the brothers navigate East End London while attempting to enlist them in some of her schemes. Stephen Graham as Henry “Sugar” Goodson is the bare-fisted heavyweight that stands in the way of the brothers’ achieving their dreams in their new home. The scenes are as soot-stained as in Peaky Blinders and the look at life on the margins is similarly rewarding.