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| Mad Men Starts Sunday 2nd March 2008, 10pm, BBC Four What you are, what you want, what you love doesn't matter. It's all about how you sell it. Mad Men delves into the lives, loves and ambitions of a group of ruthlessly competitive men and women working in a 1960s advertising agency. Set on and around Madison Avenue - home of New York's ad agencies at the time, and the "Mad" of the title - the series was created by Sopranos writer Matthew Weiner and has gained rave reviews in the US. The series revolves around the complicated world of Don Draper, the biggest ad man (and ladies' man) in the business, and his colleagues at the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency. As Don makes the plays in the boardroom and the bedroom, he struggles to stay a step ahead of the rapidly changing times and the young executives nipping at his heels. At the beginning of a new decade the employees of the high profile Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency have to be able to keep up with change - otherwise how will they tap into the magic that influences consumers to buy one brand of cigarettes more than another? And these people buy a lot of cigarettes. The 1950s are giving way to the 60s but casual anti-Semitism and sexual harassment are as acceptable as long, liquid lunches. Creator and writer Matthew Weiner says, "I think Mad Men will resonate with today's viewers. I think it's kind of an opportunity for a type of science-fiction, to go visit a different time. You are talking about the same issues we have in our lives right now. It comes full circle. Women are facing the same issues they were facing then and some in between." He adds, "People might perceive that period as an innocent time, but that wasn't necessarily the case - and that becomes more and more clear with every episode. I believe that who these characters are will really resonate with viewers - whether they are calculating how to move up the corporate ladder without being noticed or just trying to keep their very complicated personal lives in check, something we all can relate to even today." Cast Jon Hamm Don Draper Elisabeth Moss Peggy Vincent Kartheiser Pete January Jones Betty Christina Hendricks Joan |
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| Mad Men Tuesday 04 March 11:20pm - 12:10am BBC2 Drama series which takes an unflinching look at the world of advertising in 1960s New York. Top executive Don Draper's position is under threat from his competitors. An assignment to sell cigarettes after a medical report about their dangers has just been published doesn't help. |
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| Mad Men: the new Sopranos It's back to the unreconstructed 1960s for the latest US TV import Sunday, 2 March 2008 Farewell to the "made men"; hello to the Mad Men. Television has found a successor to The Sopranos – a chronicle of the psychotic yet strangely sympathetic members of a New York crime family – and it's coming here. Tonight British viewers will be introduced to Don Draper, and if the reaction to him in America is anything to go by, they will quickly form a new love-hate relationship with the all-man, misogynistic hero. Draper, played by Jon Hamm, is the central character in the award-winning Mad Men, written by Matthew Weiner, a former Sopranos scriptwriter, and set in a 1960s New York advertising agency. Unlike recent US imports such as Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, or The Sopranos, which had strong female characters, Mad Men harks back to when guys were guys and women were doormats. Draper asks one colleague: "What do women want?" The reply is terse: "Who cares?" Part of the appeal of the drama, which has already won two Golden Globe awards for its first series, is its setting in the 1960s when social and political change transformed America. The characters smoke. A woman asking for the contraceptive pill is warned by her gynaecologist: "Even in our modern times, easy women don't get husbands." The commercial and critical success of Mad Men has given hope to many who despaired of US television after the trauma of the Writers Guild strike. Produced by the small cable station American Movie Classics, Mad Men started life as a pilot script by Weiner in 2000. He sent it on spec to David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos. It was enough to see Weiner hired on The Sopranos although Mad Men was shelved. When The Sopranos ended in the US last year after eight years, HBO turned down the Mad Men script, despite Chase championing it, a mistake recently acknowledged by the channel's executives. "I loved The Sopranos. But not every problem can be solved by killing someone," Weiner told The New York Times. "When you take that out of the mix, talking is kind of what you have left, although a lot of problems on this show are solved by sleeping with people." Chase said of the script: "It was lively and it had something new to say. Here was someone who had written a story about advertising in the 1960s, and was looking at recent American history through that prism." 'Mad Men' is on BBC4 tonight at 10pm |
| QUOTE (little pixie @ Mar 7 2008, 03:49 PM) |
| I, too, have it on tape and expect to get round to watching it in 2012. :ph43r: |
| QUOTE (BouncyCastle @ Mar 7 2008, 03:28 PM) | ||
That'll be handy, since the only thing on telly will be the fupping olympics. |