Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 28 August

Mad Men (Weiner, 2007-2015)

As if I didn’t need another thing to watch in my own life, I’ve started rewatching Mad Men from the beginning.

This was prompted by the discovery that all seven seasons are now back on Netflix in Aotearoa which means that I can finally read Matt Zoller Seitz’s book Mad Men Carousel*, which has been sitting on my shelf for a few years, waiting for this moment.

Mad Men was one of the first shows in that incredible blossoming of American prestige television of the 2010s. Ostensibly a drama about a New York advertising agency in the 1960s, it is a brilliantly constructed, cerebral, examination of … oh, so many things, not least masculine identity, the making of modern America, capitalism and its constructs, lots of stuff.

There’s barely a wasted moment in the whole thing which is why I have been looking forward to reading Seitz’s book – a kind of bible for Mad Men – for so long.

Based on – but much expanded upon – Seitz’s episode recaps for Vulture.com, it contains a deep dive into each episode with lots of footnotes. There’s also a timeline of the 60s showing how real events were reflected in the show, some lovely black and white illustrations, and specially commissioned poetry at the beginning of each season.

Seitz is one of the writers about film and television who I most admire and wish I could compare myself to. He’s trenchantly observant and as interested in form as he is in themes, and both of those are extremely important when it comes to Mad Men.

So, every Sunday night for the next couple of years I will be watching a single episode of Mad Men and then settling in to read Seitz’s chapter about it. I’m at season one episode three at the moment: the episode where we discover that the suave and controlled Don Draper (Jon Hamm) might not be all he is cracked up to be and when he abandons his own daughter’s birthday party, contemplates suicide by a railroad track, and then tries to make up for it by buying her a puppy.

Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner came to New Zealand in 2009 to speak (or rather be interviewed on stage) at the SPADA industry conference and I was lucky enough to be there when he described his writing process as basically lying on a couch while someone takes his dictation. He’s only made one more show since Mad Men, the single-season The Romanoffs which is on Prime Video. Has anyone seen it? Is it worth a shot?

*The link is to Matt Zoller Seitz’s own arts bookshop where he still has a handful of autographed copies of the first paperback edition for sale. That’s the version that I have.

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Where to watch Mad Men