New TV - Mad Men

Mad Men is the first commissioned show for AMC - American Movie Classics, a channel that shows movies, much in the lines of TCM. Following from the success and quality of cable shows on Showcase and HBO, it's nice to see this departure from them, and if the experiment works, AMC says they will produce more drama.

Right out of the gate, this has one of the the most gorgeous title sequences I can remember and I already want one of the shots hanging on my wall. The title refers to Madison Avenue, New York, the birth place of the modern advertising agency, and this show is set in the late fifties at the start of that boom. If any of you ever watched Bewitched as a kid, and remember Darren's job as an ad man, you'll get a sense of the environment we're talking about: men in slicked-back hair and suits, and women in pill-box hats and nipped-waist dresses to the knee. But apart from the office furniture that's where the similarity ends. These guys are arrogant, adulterous and, boy, do they smoke a lot! It's actually quite distracting. They smoke in bed, in restaurants, in the office, whilst driving. If this show gains in viewership, it's only a matter of time before the anti-smoking lobby call for its censorship. But in fact there are lots of health hazards to be observed in this interesting retro drama, and strangely, it's part of the appeal! In one scene, a mother chastises her daughter for wearing a plastic bag over here head whilst playing with her brother. Rather than point out the risks of suffocation, this concerned parent was troubled by the location of the dry cleaning from whence it came. At least with today's kids, we just have to worry about obesity.

The characters on first introduction seem quite stereotypical of what we've come to expect from movies of that era. The men are rugged and misogynistic and the women are pretty, perfectly groomed and are valued for either their typing or their housekeeping. There are issues of adultery, depression and sexual discrimination, but the heart of the story is Don Draper, a brilliant Creative Director with a perfect family and a past he wants to keep hidden. There is no soap-opera pacing to this show. Much like The Sopranos, Mad Men is a whole package and if you chase a closure to a storyline, you'll miss the nuances and social commentary that enhance viewing . It's also entertaining to see how agencies and campaigns worked back then and also to observe the massive social and technological differences to today's lifestyles. The performances are solid and the absence of recognisable actors assists in transposing the viewer into the past. There are a number of shows in the works set in past eras and this one evokes the retro-ambiance most effectively.

http://media.amctv.com/originals/madmen/