Commentariat

Many British people who know nothing of the social or corporate practices of New York’s Madison Avenue in the 1960s will avidly tune in tonight for the second series of Mad Men. This award-winning (three Golden Globes and six Emmys) cable show has stolen a lot of hearts, for its pin-sharp depiction of life in pre-Kennedy, pre-Woodstock, three-martini America, before the modern world kicked in: when the only black faces in work environments were working the lifts, when creative directors offered guests Jack Daniels at 11am, when business wives dressed like Stepford clones and fretted about wrapping paper, when sharp-suited executives with Brylcreemed hair assumed they could sleep with the typing pool as a kind of droit du copywriter and everyone in the office – everyone in restaurant, cinema, car, bed and doctor’s consulting-room – smoked like laboratory beagles.