I very much enjoy watching shows and movies on paid TV. These are usually my preferences although I might enjoy good cooking shows or travel shows. My preference on cooking shows is also covered by other media too; they relax me a lot!
One of the series I have been watching lately is Mad Men. I must say I am hooked! I think that this series not only is a good depiction of the American life of 1950-1970s but also the actors are quite good – in terms of skills I mean. They manage to imaginatively transfer you to the mood of those years, in Madison Avenue, NY.
The show talks about the life and works of a group of advertising men in a company named Sterling Cooper, thus the titles’ wordplay (M)Ad Men, while at the same time describes their business, their eagerness to stand out, their personal lives, and the political landscape. So, not only does the play talk about their lives, but it also describes how the political events of the time affected them: the WW2, the Japanese attack to Pearl harbor, elections, the Kennedy & Martin Luther King assassinations and so on.
Moreover, it manages to accurately describe various social themes such as the power of men, the luck of power of women - who were mostly housewives, sex, drinking & alcoholism, smoking, doing business, surviving wars, post war reconstruction, sexual liberation, the value of money (or the non-value of it), the classes’ characteristics.
At the same time plotting can be multi-level while the archetype of the protagonist, Don Draper, is admired by both men and women. He is a self-made, smart (and secretly sensitive when needed), handsome, womanizer businessman – the men want to be like him, the women fall in love with him. So, the series swirls mainly around the life and works of this Ad Man, Don Draper, played by Jon Hamm. He is a good actor. You can see the sentimental changes on his face and the drama beneath his expressions. And as a bonus he is very good-looking!
Jon Hamm is surrounded by a team of good actors able to successfully convey those decades’ atmosphere: Elisabeth Moss, Christina Hendricks, John Slattery, Vincent Kartheiser and so many more.
The series was broadcasted from 2007-2015, has 7 circles of 12-13 episodes each. I watched it on Netflix platform. In the past it was also shown on Amazon Prime platform but for some reason and without warning seized. The man behind this success series is Matthew Weiner, who also created The Sopranos & The Romanoffs. A talent!
Pic source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0804503/