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Friday 9 January 2009

Past perfect

Mad Men (BBC4)

Rather, it remains neutral almost to the point of amorality. There’s no avant-la-lettre PC character telling everyone where they’re wrong. Instead, we just get flip, funny, cynical plotlines, like the one where the resolutely WASP-ish agency is pitching for a Jewish-owned department store account. When our hero Don Draper (Jon Hamm) goes into the first client meeting, he’s surprised to see some token employee he barely recognises from the mailroom standing by the storyboard. ‘You remember our hotshot from the art department?’ heavy-hints his boss. ‘David Coen?’

I’m sure as this marvellous, snappy, richly detailed, intelligently scripted series progresses we’ll be given to understand that all is not well in 1960s America, that the glossily perfect world invented by the Mad Men masks a seamy underside of bullying, chauvinism, infidelity, frustration, despair and all sorts of other exciting drama- generating themes. (Though probably not random, brutal killing, unfortunately: The Sopranos did rather corner that market.)

But something tells me that no matter how sordid it gets, the majority of us — the chicks as much as the guys — are still going to finish each episode wishing we were characters in that world rather than this one. Partly it’s the adoring way it has been styled and shot: the super-saturated colour (or color, perhaps); the way everyone looks and dresses just that little bit better than people probably did back then, even on Madison Avenue.

Mainly, though, I think, it will have to do with our burning nostalgia for the values of an age which, though still quite close to ours in years, yet feels about as remote as the Crimean War. Yes, 1960s America may have been about consumerism, materialism and unbridled capitalism, and all those other things we’ve agreed over organic fruit smoothies and tofu snacks after our Bikram yoga classes are, like, really bad. But it also had an optimism about the world and mankind’s role in it which now feels almost unimaginable.

Smoking was fun; cocktails loosened you up; flying was glamorous; buying more consumer goods was not merely enjoyable but morally desirous for it created the virtuous economic circle that made everyone richer and happier. Some of us still believe in these things. Maybe Mad Men will help reveal how many we actually are.

Finally, may I just say what a matchlessly exquisite pleasure it was watching the splendid, civilised, Max Kaufman-led Christ Church team thrashing the weird, slightly class-war-y Sheffield lot in the University Challenge finals. The barbarians may be at the gates, but they’re not quite through yet, it seems.

More articles from: James Delingpole | this section

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