Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #948 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-06-30
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 3
• Running time: 592 minutes

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

Synopsis
Matthew Weiner, a writer and executive producer for THE SOPRANOS, may have set this series in the picture-perfect 1960s, but his characters are just as scheming as the mobsters on his last show. MAD MEN begins in 1960 on Manhattan's Madison Avenue at the fictional ad agency of Sterling Cooper. Creative director Don Draper (Jon Hamm) rules the halls of his company and the hearts of every woman he meets, while his wife, Betty (January Jones), struggles to be the perfect mate and mother back in Connecticut. But just as in the world of advertising, Don may not be all that he appears.


In MAD MEN, the glass ceiling is dangerously low, and sexism reigns in a way that may shock modern viewers. But this isn't the prim '60s of THE DICK VAN DYKE SHOW; Weiner's characters seduce, smoke, and swig with abandon--often within the walls of Sterling Cooper. MAD MEN takes equal parts substance and style to create an addictive cocktail that fully earned its freshman season wins at the Golden Globes for Best Dramatic Series and Best Actor in a Drama.

Customer Reviews

Ice Cool Show for sophisticated viewers.
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.

Simply perfect
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.

Best US TV series since the Wire
In a TV world which is dominated by dumbed-down, reality tv, MAD MEN is something smart, fresh and seriously addictive - a character-driven show with stellar acting and writing.

It is one of the most beautifully designed shows you'll ever see. Although I was not alive during the 60s, Mad Men paints a vivid picture of them, so much so that it is hard to imagine the 60s being anything else. This is how it had to be, right?!

I have had friends say that it moves too slow, and I can see where they are coming from to a point. It doesn't have the kind of explosive violence or drama of the Sopranos, for example.

Instead it wanders along, slowly crafting its whole universe to the smallest detail, and is driven by a fantastic script and some great acting. In particular, Jon Hamm as Don Draper really excels, having being plucked somewhat from obscurity to star in this show. The whole support cast is, without exception, excellent as well.

It is also very entertaining seeing the difference in culture between then and now, - even though I don't smoke, I find myself having urges to chain smoke in the office while enjoying a nice whiskey. One great scene involves Draper's manager after quite a number of drinks stumbling out of the house, drink in hand, and going to the wrong car while Draper just laughs and corrects him.

This show definitely deserves all the accolades and awards it receives, and I would not hesitate to recommend it to any fan of good TV.