Jon Hamm from "Mad Men" finally has a suitable new role. He once again plays a flawless con artist.

Andrew Cooper wakes up in a pool of blood lying next to a dead man. He finds himself in a strange house at night. While trying to cover his tracks, he slips at the entrance and falls into the swimming pool. He comments on this for us, the audience, from offscreen and with his trademark ironic coolness: "I know what you're thinking: The pool is a metaphor."

But Coop, as everyone calls him, doesn't feel metaphorical. He feels "damn clear and damn cold." In the pool at night. In front of an unknown house. With a dead man in the lobby. "And I wondered," he continues, "how everything could have gone so wrong so quickly."

This is the question that begins the nine-part series "Your Friends & Neighbors," starring Jon Hamm. It's his first in a television series since his appearance on "Mad Men," which made Hamm a global star. And in which, starting in July 2007, he starred for eight years as advertising executive Don Draper, who reminded his audience in the feminist-conscious, minority-conscious, nicotine-free, and politically correct America of the 21st century of the times when men wore elegant suits, drove lavish cars, drank whiskey in the morning, chain-smoked all day, kept Black people as servants, and treated women as sexual prey—in the office, in restaurants, and on the street. They ignored only their own wives.

With its nostalgia for Protestant white male dominance against a dazzling retro aesthetic, "Mad Men" ran for seven seasons and 92 episodes, aired in 70 countries, and won every award imaginable. The series made Jon Hamm, the elegant, virile man with the boyish laugh, the star of a cool male type who lived through the 1960s as if they hadn't brought about any change in him, let alone any awakening.

In "Your Friends & Neighbors," the new series from screenwriter Jonathan Tropper, Jon Hamm is back with money. He plays a hedge fund manager in a wealthy small town in upstate New York who's already owned several houses, received raises, and been through a divorce. His wife and children cost him a fortune, he rents an expensive house, drives a $200,000 black Maserati, and does everything else to maintain the illusion of living the good life.

Then, following an intrigue by his boss, he is abruptly fired. And because a contract clause bars Cooper from taking a competing position for two years, and his economic advisor tells him he can only afford this lifestyle for six months at most, he begins a new career: He breaks into his friends' homes and steals from them. He takes watches and other luxury goods, which he assures us their owners won't even notice the loss. The hedge fund manager becomes a Robin Hood in his own right. He steals from the rich and divides his loot among himself.

In Andrew Cooper, Jon Hamm has found a character reminiscent of Don Draper from "Mad Men" without copying him. "Don was a seller, Coop is a buyer," is how the actor described the two roles. Hamm plays both men as flawless con artists suffering from a silent despair. Don Draper conceals this despair behind a mask-like serenity. At heart, he is a nihilist. Jon Hamm played the man without passions with overwhelming restraint, making his emptiness visible in a way that only a highly disciplined actor can.

At least his new character is better able to embrace her emotions. Andrew Cooper also leads a rich, meaningless life, and even he doesn't seem to be able to overcome his feelings of emptiness. But he is aware of his shortcomings. The fact that the actor is being so enthusiastically celebrated for his new role in the Anglo-Saxon media isn't just due to his talent. It's also due to the fact that he hasn't been able to deliver convincing performances as an actor over the past ten years.

"There are no second acts in American lives," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in a 1932 essay, and the same fate seemed to befall Jon Hamm. Especially since the actor was already in his mid-thirties when Matthew Weiner chose him from among eighty applicants for the role of Don Draper. At the time, Hamm was teaching as a substitute teacher, waiting tables again, and had given up hope of success as an actor.

Because he absolutely didn't want to embody a variation of Don Draper and turned down all offers of roles in that vein, Hamm turned to comedy. He starred in series by comedian Tina Fey and in simple-minded action comedies like "Keeping Up with the Joneses." It's not that Hamm doesn't have a sense of humor, as his self-deprecating appearances on the satirical show "Saturday Night Life" demonstrated. But he lacks the comic timing of a Jeff Bridges, the willingness to ridicule of a Bill Murray, who nevertheless retains his melancholic dignity. Whenever Jon Hamm wants to be funny, he degenerates into a puppet of his own punchlines.

He fared much better in serious roles. His performance in Brad Anderson's bitter political thriller "Beirut" was outstanding. The film was based on a screenplay by Tony Gilroy, who had demonstrated in the "Bourne" trilogy with Matt Damon how to create a dramatic, credible narrative in an action film. Hamm plays an American diplomat who mediates in a violent Beirut and loses his wife in an assassination attempt. He returns to the US, works in menial jobs, and regresses to alcoholism.

After a former friend is kidnapped in Beirut, he returns and resolves the conflict thanks to his contacts, knowledge, and fearlessness. Jon Hamm plays the resigned diplomat with a power that allows his character's commitment to shine through beneath his drunken lethargy. He demonstrates that he is capable of far more as an actor than most of his directors give him credit for.

What's unfortunate about his new role is that Jon Hamm is once again playing a multimillionaire. In the new series, he looks "like a man who's returned from a vacation at 'White Lotus,'" wrote Variety magazine, referring to the series of the same name. The series particularly focuses on super-rich people who export their empty selves to vacations. The three seasons of "White Lotus" are sarcastically directed, yet remain cynical because they depict tourist feudalism without analyzing its economics.

And those credit card types that colonize so many American TV shows are getting on my nerves more and more. Their flaunted wealth is repulsive. The last thing America needs right now is more super-rich people flaunting their wealth like a title of nobility.