Ok, you'll have to excuse the rather lax start to this blog but I have a new passion in my life: the excellent and award winning AMC production, Mad Men. Now perhaps I'm stepping on well trodden ground here considering the grovelling media coverage of the show already but somehow it still manages to exceed all of my expectations every single episode. In fact the opening itself was enough with its beautiful theme song "A Beautiful Mine" by RJD2, one of few that I actually bother to watch every single episode.When I bought the first series a few weeks back (no I'm not part of the Foxtel club) I had only seen snippets of the show and while I was expecting an artful and contemporary historical drama I really underestimated its cultural gravitas. The show may be heavily routed in the 1960s period with references to events such as the 1962 American Airlines crash and the death of Marilyn Munroe, its foundations in the burgeoning consumer culture and advertising age are equally reflective on our present materialistic values even if we don't chain smoke and drink ourselves into quite as early a grave or treat women with such a shameless, or at least as evident, objectivity.
That's one of the joys of Mad Men: the extensive product placements of everything from Heineken to Cadillac, paradoxical in a show which is so searching of post-modern culture yet still remains true to its own formula of advertising and marketing. Unfortunately here in Australia free to air tv hasn't jumped on the Mad Men bandwagon, leaving the scraps to SBS instead which has only just finished showing the second season. Thank goodness then that I have left it this late to start watching it as I am at present only half way through series two of four so far, on DVD leaving plenty more episodes to come over the summer non-ratings period. If there was ever a cool antidote to the period of crap reality junk and cancelled American sitcoms this is it.
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