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Amazon.co.uk Review
Welcome to a world where Monday has a three drink minimum. Mad Men exists here and it's a fabulous place to visit, back before Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique really made much of an impact and before there were health warnings on cigarettes. It was an America on the brink of social explosion and Mad Men, which tells the story of a group of Madison Avenue advertising executives in the early 1960s, captures that surface stillness perfectly, complete with the growing tension barely contained below the surface. The show succeeds on every level. HBO famously passed on Mad Men, created by former Sopranos executive producer and writer Matthew Weiner. AMC picked it up, and thank goodness they did. From the first episode, season one becomes an essential, utterly addictive television-watching experience. Beautifully filmed and masterfully written, the show manages to present the period honestly but with little nostalgia, and as soon as you get over the constant smoking, drinking and treatment of women as little more than "girls" who get coffee and answer the phone, the complexity of these characters (especially the dashing Jon Hamm as Creative Director Don Draper) will leave you completely captivated. Season one features clandestine office romances, shadowy pasts, a ton of adultery, closeted homosexuality and a lot more drama that seems risqué even now. But again, one of the most impressive things about Mad Men is that everything is executed with absolute class, style and elegance. A bonus for the DVD viewer is that, like The Sopranos, Mad Men has a ton of little moments and hints leading up to character revelations and plot twists that make watching the episodes over and over continually rewarding. –-Kira Canny
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Beautifully tense....,
By Ali McGinley (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mad Men - Complete Season 1 [DVD] (DVD)
Incredibly well researched, this is a beautiful drama bubbling with a tension which really captures the era. Mad Men is overwhelmingly uncomfortable to watch for those of us who were brought up in an age defined by both political correctness and economic change - not only is this a chauvinistic, homophobic world defined by men, it is a world of capitalism, consumerism and greed. And yet it is exactly this which makes this so watchable.
The series revolves around an ad agency on Madison Avenue in the 60s, and its strength lies in the slow building of the characters who inhabit this shady world of cigarette sales and illicit office liasons. The central tenet of the series is office politics as the "Mad Men" vie for advertising sales of products which define the 60s,ranging from the first disposable diapers to the carousel slide projector. Set against a backdrop of an America on the edge, we are treated to original footage from, for example, the Kennedy/Nixon election campaign. We are left in no doubt that this is an accurate portrayal of a world which now seems so out of touch: where smoking and drinking to excess in the office is normal, where women are objectified and dismissed (pre 60s feminism at its most disquieting), where the billboard presentation of a sinister American Dream shaped by mass production is as much a facade as that presented by many of the characters to their nearest and dearest on a daily basis. And it is this which keeps you hooked: there is a gripping sense of something disturbing lying just under the surface - as it does with so many of its characters- and we are never very sure when the explosion will happen. It is very real, very unsettling and above all, a harsh reminder that we have a long way to go before we can really leave behind the legacies of this era.
89 of 95 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simply perfect,
By Dundas (UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Mad Men - Complete Season 1 [DVD] (DVD)
Remarkable. Utterly gripping, gorgeous to look at, fabulously well scripted, impeccable acting. All the more remarkable, then, that nothing much actually happens. Sure there are individual events and half a dozen longer threads woven through the series, but the real drama is found in how the characters relate to each other and themselves. Each character is complex, multi-layered, often deeply flawed, and fascinating. So, not one for people who like plenty of action. It will, however, handsomely reward those who take delight in dialogue and character. In my opinion, simply perfect.
125 of 134 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Ice Cool Show for sophisticated viewers.,
By
This review is from: Mad Men - Complete Season 1 [DVD] (DVD)
Buried away on BBC 4 & the midnight slot on BBC 2 it's little wonder that no one's seen this show. I was lucky enough to read a review and started to catch it from Episode 3 and I'm so glad I did. The show is brilliant. Set in a 1960's New York Ad Agency it deals with the life of the ad men, their wives, mistresses and their secretaries. The writing is so sharp you'll cut yourself, the research and detail is faultless, it's slick, cool and gripping. Each episode is a gem in it's own right, like little mini Hitchcock films, the style and look is very Rear Window. Even the open credits are a work of art and a tribute to the great Saul Bass.
Although set in the 60's it easy to relate to the men & women in the show, times have changed a lot, the men all smoke & drink in the office and think nothing of making a sexist remark to their P.A. Now these things don't get said in front of women in the office anymore, but they are still thought and said behind closed doors, so the issues they create are still very much in the work place. They just said it out loud in the 60's. The ad men are hard driven and determined to be top dog at work and find it difficult to transfer their work personalities to home where they suddenly have to take off the suit and attend kids birthday parties or paint the fence. The wives are complex people stuck in their domesticated perfect wife routines, slowly being driven crazy by suppressing their personalities. It's pure class all the way, forget Desperate Housewives and get watching Mad Men, it's the best thing on TV for years.
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