On Mad Men: Don't Fact-Check Your Way Out Of A Good Story - Page 2

And pick all the nits you want, but when the human characters of Mad Men smoke, drink, flaunt their marriage vows, and feed their un-seatbelted children peanut butter, they are not doing so simply to rub our collective noses in the outdated social mores of 1960. They are also creating the mise en scène that makes fictional ad agency Sterling Cooper  (and all who are nailed in her) a world we viewers can immerse ourselves in, every week. Like the viewers, the creators are observing that world — and commenting on it — from a 2007 perspective. Throughout its history, television has done period drama with varying degrees of success. Mad Men 's production design seems meticulously researched compared to period pieces from American television's earlier periods. How do Gunsmoke or Bonanza hold up next to Deadwood (or even '90s syndie Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years)? From its second season, Happy Days included more anachronisms (costumes, grooming, dialog) in each episode than we will probably see in Mad Men's entire run. 

Productions take more care with historical material in the era of Deadwood and HBO's various biographical films, but there are still exceptions. We'll cut the recent BBC production of Robin Hood some slack for its obvious camp but that still doesn't excuse its lapses into modern dialog ("Okay!") and off-the-rack costumes. The Tudors is Showtime's wretched retelling of the Henry VIII history in which only a few of the supporting roles are even watchable. Despite the richness (and middling accuracy) of the interiors and the richness (and irritating inaccuracy) of much of the costuming and grooming, the series' grating dialog and petulant characterizations are enough to make the discerning viewer long for the late '60s and early '70s run of BBC and ITV studio productions that set a seldom-matched standard for televised historical drama.Some of those British series were, like Mad Men, original stories and not adaptations, among them The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Upstairs, Downstairs. They were quite simply very well-written and period-accurate plays. 

Article Author: Rechercher

Rechercher is the senior editor of Beyond the Roots of Lounge and beyond, deux.

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