With the third season of AMC's Mad Men set to debut in a few weeks I felt like writing about the previous seasons and their DVD sets. For myself Mad Men is the cultural heir to the crown of 'Top Drama' which has been previously occupied by Six Feet Under, Deadwood, The Sopranos, The Wire and The Shield. Times are pretty lean if you enjoy high quality drama, so I take it where I can get it - fortunately (as I've written previously) Mad Men is a show which embodies quality in every aspect.

Created by Sporanos alumni Matthew Weiner (Who drafted the pilot before starting work on The Sopranos) Mad Men focuses around the offices of Sterling Cooper, an advertising company located on New York's Maddison Avenue in the 1960s. Mad Men itself was a term created by the advertising executives who worked at that time - it pays to advertise yourself if you're in the business of advertising other people's products.

Donald Draper (Jon Hamm) is the principle star and character of the show, is the creative director of the company, an inspired individual who is as brilliant as he his complex. Much of the show revolves around Don's work and home life and as the series progresses we come to learn more about him. Don employs one Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) to work as his new secretary, a quiet and unassuming young woman who shows a real creative flair as time passes.

Also working for the company are the ambitious Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), a young executive with everything to prove; Roger Sterling (John Slattery) senior partner, Harry Crane (Rich Sommer) media buyer, Salvatore Romano (Bryan Batt) the Italian-American Art Director, Ken Cosgrove (Aaron Staton) and the simply fantastic Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks) who heads up the secretarial pool and dispenses both discipline and advice to the other women in the office.

At home Don lives with his wife Betty (January Jones), son Robert (Aaron Hart) and daughter Sally (Kiernan Shipka); his wife is beautiful and his children are adorable and devoted, but Don still seems troubled and discontent. So he dallies with other women.

Mad Men is everything it should be and everything you could hope for in a television show, from it's stunning appearance, through the tight writing, enthralling dialog and all the way to the complexity of it's stories this is a show that, without a single doubt, succeeds. It's first season is gripping, interesting and intelligent, showing American history through the window of advertising and creating a world which feels almost historical itself. It's such a well crafted piece you could almost think it was a reenactment of the times rather than a drama.

Now the first season set is pretty much what you'd call 'no frills', apart from a cardboard dust cover (which is just lovely to the touch) and a few on disc extras this set is stripped to the bare basics. But that has helped keep the price down, while I would have appreciated something which managed to evoke the feel of the era - perhaps designed all in cardboard with minimal plastic - I can certainly appreciate the pure simplicity of this set and the low price which came as a result. The UK edition also has a stylish cover and the back really evokes the feel of the 1960s wonderfully. So it's a pretty big success for a three disc set.

If you consider yourself a connoisseur of the best in drama or simply enjoy a well put together show with depth, strong characters and a genuine feel to it you'd do yourself well picking up Mad Men's first season. I feel this is one to recommend to any fan of the drama shows I mentioned in my opening paragraph as it's quite simply the best drama on television at the moment.

Believe what you hear about this one.

Extras:
Advertising the American Dream
Scoring Mad Men
Audio Commentaries with cast and crew

Details:
Aspect Ratio: 16:9
Language: English
Rating: 15
Region: 2
Run Time: 9 hours 42 minutes
Subtitles: English HOH
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Interestingly enough I came across a lengthy interview with Richard Sommer (from Mad Men and The Devil Wears Prada) over on the site http://geekspeak.boardgamegeek.com/ it turns out that he's quite the board gamer, a pretty well grounded guy and just a very nice individual indeed.

The entire podcast can be listened to over here, be warned that the first part of the interview is less an interview and more friends just chatting about stuff. But there are some great moments later on about how he got his break in The Devil Wears Prada, assumptions about the sexuality of his character in that movie, Anne Hathaway, difficulties in getting cast and Rich's part as Harry Crane in Mad Men and appearing on The Office.

[Mild warning for profanities in this interview]
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With 2008 bringing the end of some of my favourite shows - especially my two favourites - I've spent most of the Christmas period sitting about thinking "Are they really over?", but once I got over this I knew it was time to look forward and see what could possibly replace the huge gap in my TV watching. Now right now there's little out there with the same singular vision that Shawn Ryan and David Simon brought to their own respective shows. These two are prime candidates from the rarest breed of show runner, the ones with a singular vision for their show and a determination to see their stories to their natural conclusion and then end them. They don't stretch the show out beyond it's natural length of existence and milk it till it goes sour and likewise they don't wander of to do other major projects and leave their babies in less capable hands. They knew what the stories were they wanted to tell and they were committed to telling them in full

In short the greatest things about The Wire, The Shield, Six Feet Under and The Sopranos were the show runners and their commitment to their production. They are all dedicated and true storytellers in their medium. So finding shows to fill this vacuum left by their respective passing is not easy. Especially when you look at how weak the new shows which arrived in 2008 were. But it's not a total a total disaster, there are still quality shows out there that can fill this gap at least partially and I'm going to propose a few of them over the next week or so.

Damages:
(Second season starts Jan 7th)
Damages is a show creatively descended from The Sopranos. It stars Glenn Close (The Shield) as Patty Hewes, the smart and determined head of a litigation firm. Her number two is Tom Shayes (Tate Donovan - The O.C., Friends) and they both hire Ellen Parsons(Rose Byrne - 28 Weeks Later) to assist them in a class action lawsuit against Arthur Frobisher (Ted Danson - Cheers, Curb Your Enthusiasm) on behalf of his ex-employees who were all heavily affected when some accounting irregularities brought down his company amidst some shady stock sales. Art is defended by Ray Fiske (Zeljko Ivanek - Homicide, 24) a competent defense attorney who's been working for him a long time.

The show uses a complex and intelligent narrative that mixes two story lines, one set in the present and the other which starts six months previously. The two narrative threads are differentiated by a yellow filter placed across the present day scenes while the vast majority of the story is told in the past narrative, gradually bringing the story lines closer together while revealing information and enticing the viewer all the time.

Damages is a smart show, it's filled with realistic people who are genuine and multi-faceted. It's also not afraid to let the viewer make up their own minds about events, it tends to avoid over explaining and spoon feeding exposition to the viewer. It's also constructed in the same way that The Wire is, with a season long narrative which is surprisingly light on court scenes and packs quite a body count to boot. This is a clever, pacey show which will keep you watching from the first moment to the last. Teasing you with tidbits of information until the entire picture comes into focus.

For a second opinion on this you can also look at the review which originally convinced me to give the show a try. It's from Dan at Dan's Media Digest and the direct link is here. I will be reviewing the second season as each episode airs and I will also be reviewing the first season DVD as well.

Mad Men:
(Third Season airs later this year)
I've written about Mad Men previously in a Why You Should Watch... feature located here. At this point I'm not sure I have much more to write without repeating myself, but I can say that the second season is every bit as good as the first one was. Mad Men is another show creatively descended from The Sopranos, this time it's Matthew Weiner's project. Now there has been some hoo-ha over Matthew signing to show run the third season - apparently there is a five season storyline plan - and he's been holding out for more money. A ridiculous amount more considering the current economic and TV climate. But the show is genuine quality. It's not as accessible as Damages in my opinion, but for those people who enjoyed the pacing of The Wire or adore the stylistic beauty of the 1950s it's a rare treat indeed.

These are not the only recommendations I will be putting forward over the next week or two. So there's plenty more to come.
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Starring:
Jon Hamm as Donald Draper
Elisabeth Moss as Peggy Olson
Vincent Kartheiser as Peter Campbell
January Jones as Betty Draper
Christina Hendricks as Joan Holloway
Bryan Batt as Salvatore Romano
Michael Gladis as Paul Kinsely
Aaron Staton as Ken Cosgrove
and Rich Sommer as Harry Crane

In 2000 Matthew Weiner wrote up a spec script pilot for a show called Mad Men. In 2002; after reading the script David Chase hired Matthew to write for The Sopranos and that could have been the end of it right there. The script was set aside and largely forgotten about until the final season of The Sopranos - the network AMC expressed an interest in it and so began a new chapter in televisual history.

There are several different layers of shows in media, they range from the lowest level (reality TV shows) upwards and branch out into different genres, but there are only a few shows that achieve something special. It's speculated that we stand on the cusp of "The New Renaissance" a time of culture that would rival and maybe even exceed the original renaissance, the height of Greek civilisation and the Roman Empire. It's clear that if this is going to happen the media and the Internet will be involved somehow - but for the most part the media industry is involved in prehistoric caveman battles against the changing tide of demand and churning out the next phone voting easy fix mass audience gormfest; while the Internet is busy trolling each other, posting pictures of cats with amusing text and answering multiple choice questions in quizzes that profess to tell them "What member of Desperate Housewives they are most like."

But every once in a while a show arrives that stands so tall above the rest that it's clear an evolution in the media is possible. These are landmark shows that change the rules previously accepted, shows that are often considered to be high risk or unconventional. Seinfeld changed the face of the sitcom, Six Feet Under brought us the beauty and spectacle of death contrasted with the joy of living, The Shield and The Sopranos revealed that shows did not have to be about good people, Homicide changed and challenged the convention of the police procedural, Arrested Development carved a brave new area of comedy that still hasn't been equalled, Firefly broke so many boundaries that it's still "before it's time" and The Wire revealed just how deep and real drama could become if the networks woke up.

Well, you can now add Mad Men to that list of landmark shows.

Starting in 1960; during a time where Nixon and Kennedy faced off for the presidency and when cigarette smoking was just beginning to be bad for you, Mad Men gives us the world before the swinging sixties hit. A time when men were still groomed, gentile and completely misogynistic; while women still struggled to find their new role in society, accepted in the work place yet not. The show is based around Maddison Avenue in New York, specifically the show is concerned with the goings on in the advertising company Sterling Cooper and in particular with the life of one Donald Draper, a creative director at the company.

Don is a man who's life is shrouded in a fog of his own devising. He's a brilliant creative director and capable of some truly magnificent ideas, but beyond what he does there is little to know about him. Even his wife Betty is largely in the dark with regards to both Don's past and his current actions. Don's brilliance is clear for all to see, but his failings are also many and largely held in darkness. In work he is a superb and talented executive, probably the finest at the company - but his home life is deeply flawed and dissatisfying for him.

The other core characters for the show include Don's beautiful wife Betty - who has everything she could want, or at least everything convention tells her she should want - but she still feels empty and lost inside. Don's new secretary Peggy Olson; who joins the company in the first episode and shows some talent as time progresses. Joan Holloway; the office manager and head of the secretarial pool, Joan takes Peggy under her wing and mentors her - sometimes well, sometimes badly. And Peter Campbell, a young and ambitious executive at Sterling Cooper with ideas above his station and ability - he provides a large amount of the antagonistic conflict for Don in work.

In appearance and authenticity Mad Men could be easily described as a period piece, the show is beautifully shot and is incredibly authentic in appearance, costume, dialog and characterisations. It manages to effortlessly bring back the spirit of the times - things that were a part of that time are not glorified or hidden away. Cigarette smoking, drinking, misogynist attitudes, adultery, racial bias and sexist actions are all present without any apologetic attempts to politically correct them or explain that they were wrong - there is no pandering/patronising the audience here. It's a blistering portrayal of how far people have come since those times, while also echoing how far we still have left to go... The show is also able to make use of known history to tie events solidly into reality, allowing characters to react to huge events in advertising and even be involved in some of them directly. It also references the gradual change in attitudes and lifestyles as it progresses.

Mad Men is one of the great shows of our time, it's a fantastic example of everything that's good about television. It'll captivate you from the very first episode and sweep you along in it's wake, the show's second season aired this year and the first season was recently released on DVD. This makes it an ideal time to get into this show, you won't regret the decision either. It's just sublime genius.

And if these words are not enough to convince you to try this wonderful show maybe the fantastic title credits will:




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