‘Your Friends & Neighbors’ explores the chaos of crime, family, and friendship

Amanda Peet brings humour, heart and a healthy dose of menopausal fury to the latest season of Your Friends & Neighbors.

Your Friends & Neighbors is a delicious television series on Apple TV starring Jon Hamm as Andrew ‘Coop’ Cooper and Amanda Peet as his ex-wife, Mel Cooper. The series is a crime drama with a twist of comedy. Financial hotshot Coop finds himself jobless and turns to stealing rare items from his wealthy friends and neighbours. Many have so much they don’t notice when an item disappears or they are insured and reimbursed so that they can just buy their next valuable collectable.

But, as we all know, no crime goes unpunished and Coop soon gets in over his head. Despite Coop’s dastardly behaviour in Season One, which led to his wife divorcing him, he is so suave and charming that you root for him anyway, no matter how many times he does the wrong thing, even if it is ostensibly for the right reason.

Peet’s role as Coop’s wife in the first season was, in my opinion, definitely not big enough, but she gets a bigger part in Season 2, and gives a rousing performance that’s sure to have women of a certain age everywhere applauding. She’s hilarious as the pre-menopausal woman in the process of undergoing what most menopausal women endure in one form or another. The writers have taken the things men don’t understand about menopause and assigned them to Peet’s character, Mel. Peet says she relished the portrayal. From anger issues and hot flushes to horribly dry skin and, for some women, a complete loss of interest in sex, is done with such ferocious energy and resentment that Mel’s body forces her to respond in a way she would not normally behave. Peet carries off scenes that are laugh-out-loud funny.

She’s also dealing with that stage in a mother’s life, particularly in America, when she’s suddenly labelled the ‘enemy’ by her teenage daughter, Tori, played by Isabel Gravitt, which induces a particular emotional panic in Mel. Gravitt is rebelling against the adults in her life. She has her choice of Ivy League colleges at her fingertips, but on a whim of independence turns them all down, which pits her against her mother. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

James Marsden guest stars as Owen Ashe — oily, despicable and appealing all at once. He’s a billionaire with a dark side. Despite his charm, he has the iron-will to manipulate everything and anyone to his wishes, including Coop.

Olivia Munn (Samantha), who had an affair with Coop in Season One, has a lovely arc as the focus of Ashe’s pursuits. With his help, she redeems herself socially, but resists his playboy confidence, which causes him to overstep her boundaries. Hoon Lee, Coop’s best friend Barney, gets dragged into his illegal exploits which threatens all he holds dear.

There’s a lot more to the show, and it keeps the action rolling on in a way that’s gripping to the viewer. Peet sat down with The Sunday Times exclusively to talk about the sophomore season. Dressed in a mocha sweater, with the subtlest of makeup, her hair full and tumbling, and looking like she is completely recovered from her 2025 Stage 1 breast cancer diagnosis, Peet epitomised smart, natural beauty.

“I was glad that perimenopause was an ongoing theme in this season, especially because of the humour that the topic enabled. Mel Cooper doesn’t fall into the tropes of a sexless, sidelined, mopey woman, which I may resemble in real life sometimes,” she joked. “But seriously, so often if menopause is portrayed at all, it makes women the butt of the joke or it’s talked about in a whisper,” she says.

There’s one scene in particular, which I can’t describe fully because I don’t want to spoil the action. Mel gives her neighbour a gift in a fit of anger — it’s a gift no one would ever want to receive. Her depiction of a woman at war with the world and her body is so unique that it prompted other mothers at Peet’s children’s school to point at her and yell out, “I finally feel seen!” when she drops her kids off in the morning.

Despite the craziness of the character, Peet says that she doesn’t take the character home with her. “It would make me insane if I did that,” she laughs. The native New Yorker is married to Game of Thrones creator David Benioff, and is known for acting in films as diverse as Something’s Gotta Give and Syriana. Peet complimented Hamm, best known for his roles in Mad Men and Landman, for being so easy on set. “We have a similar style of working and he really looked after me,” she says. Her favourite aspect of this season? “That it starts to get really dangerous for Coop. It’s intriguing.”

Your Friends & Neighbors is available to watch on Apple TV+.