Although Netflix’s Ozark might have ended a few years ago, Apple TV has a new streaming sensation that is a perfect replacement for the dark crime thriller. After Breaking Bad’s finale aired, viewers were understandably eager to find a fitting replacement for the darkly comic crime drama. The story of how Bryan Cranston’s mild-mannered Walter White became the ruthless drug lord Heisenberg was equal parts tragic, addictive, and oddly funny, so the hunt for a substitute was inevitable. Many viewers found this replacement in Netflix’s Ozark.
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Ozark followed Jason Bateman’s accountant Marty Byrde as he relocated his family to the titular tourist destination to facilitate his job secretly laundering money for a drug cartel. Once there, Marty became embroiled in local gangland power struggles, making Ozark’s story darker and darker with each season. Although Ozark wrapped up back in 2022, Apple TV’s recent hit Your Friends And Neighbors is the perfect replacement for this series, and the latest in a proud tradition of “Suburban dad gone bad” crime dramas. This two-season hit stars Jon Hamm as a hedge fund manager, Coop.
Your Friends and Neighbors Is Perfect For Fans of Ozark (And Breaking Bad)
After the recently divorced, emotionally numb Andrew “Coop” Cooper loses his lucrative job as a financial manager, Hamm’s amoral dad struggles to keep his family in the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. Instead of telling them to downsize or cut back on expenses, Coop does the most logical thing and starts burgling his own rich neighbors to keep his cash flow coming. What follows is a dark, tense, and strangely funny story of a man’s life falling apart as he attempts to maintain control over an increasingly desperate plan.
While Ozark succeeded because the dark crime drama featured fewer moments of quirky humor than its obvious inspiration, Breaking Bad, Your Friends and Neighbors takes a different approach. In recent years, a slew of movies and shows have taken satirical aim at the super-rich, and audiences have delighted in seeing these absurdly privileged characters finally get their just desserts. Your Friends and Neighbors takes this idea and twists it, as viewers find themselves rooting for Coop to get away with his crimes despite knowing that he is no better than his extravagantly rich neighbors.
Your Friends and Neighbors Features One of Jon Hamm’s Best Performances Yet
In an era when Glass Onion, The Menu, Death of a Unicorn, Triangle of Sadness, the Ready Or Not movies, Saltburn, and The Fall of the House of Usher all take their cartoonishly terrible rich protagonists down a peg, Your Friends and Neighbors feels surprisingly refreshing. Like The White Lotus and Succession, the show not only humanizes its obscenely well-off antiheroes but also encourages the audience to root for them despite their misdeeds.
It helps that Hamm has not been this magnetic onscreen since his breakout role as Mad Men’s Don Draper, another morally dubious antihero who viewers found themselves rooting for despite his obvious toxicity. Thus, Apple TV’s hit Your Friends and Neighbors can take its place alongside Ozark and Breaking Bad as another dark dramedy that has viewers rooting for an odious protagonist thanks to its clever storytelling, compelling twists, and strong supporting cast.
