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Mad Men - why quality is better than quantity

John Hamm as Don Draper
  • Posted at 4:19pm
  • 02 March 2009
  • by AlisonGraham-RT
  • 12 comments

I have some sympathy with a recent exasperated RT correspondent who bemoaned the ubiquity of critical plaudits for Mad Men (starring Jon Hamm, below), a series that hasn't exactly taken a flaming torch to the ratings. Not that any of us expected it to: I realised long ago that the number of people (and we are not all journalists) who watch Mad Men could comfortably be fitted into an average-sized garden shed while still leaving room for the lawn mower and the paraffin heater.

Yes, there are few things quite as irritating as people banging on about a drama that you just can't bring yourself to bother about. But I do take issue with our correspondent's claim that Mad Men's setting, in a 1960s advertising agency, is to blame for its lack of success because it doesn't "resonate" with viewers.

Anyone who dismisses a drama because of its setting is missing the point. A really good drama, or even a brilliant one, like Mad Men, will transcend its setting. It could be set anywhere, in a launderette or a post office, because Mad Men is about people - intensely flawed people at that - and what motivates them to do what they do.

So much on the face of it doesn't "resonate". John Adams: a drama about the second - not the first, but the second - US President? Damages: a thriller about a cruel lawyer and her duplicitous colleagues? Generation Kill: about an embedded American reporter in Iraq? Yet they're all humdingers.

The bigger point here is that television has a duty to make things that might end up being watched only by a handful of deranged insomniacs and a hamster called Kevin. Because imagine what would happen if no-one ever took risks, if writers and producers sat back and said, "Oh dear, this isn't an insipid costume drama and it's not set in a hospital or a working-class street." So what would we end up with? A milk-teeth diet of Lark Rise to Candleford, Casualty/Holby, and Coronation Street. Doesn't bear thinking about, does it?

And Mad Men doesn't trouble anyone at peak time on a major channel, it's on BBC4 with a repeat at some ungodly hour on BBC2 (where, incidentally, it's doing comparatively well). That's the great thing about our brave new multichannel world - there are so many television channels around now that everything can find its niche, so it doesn't need to be watched by many millions to justify itself.

Watching little hidden gems is like eating caviar in the summer house while everyone else is enjoying a gargantuan tawdry party with vol-auvents at the mansion. Quite a treat.

**

Alison Graham is TV editor of Radio Times

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Comments

  • Posted on 29 April 2009
  • at 9:30am
  • by museandvent

Agree with Deborah, I feel the same about 'Party Animals' that got axed after poor ratings. I hope to see more of Mad Men on the BBC.

  • Posted on 22 April 2009
  • at 9:27pm
  • by Deborah

I really hope Mad Men returns for a new series. It is excellent and good to see something that is a bit more subtle than a lot of the stuff on TV. I loved "Party Animals" for the same reason but that did not get good ratings and therefore no further series, so hope "Mad Men" does.

  • Posted on 18 April 2009
  • at 10:33am
  • by Richard

I think this is one of the best shows on TV, and is a "slow burner" right up there with,The WIre,Damages(1), Hill Street Blues etc; however I am concerned about the "missing" storylines that where to drive the huge social changes of the Sixties and Seventies eg; he aftermath of the Kinsey Report, Mcarthyism and Rock and Roll (Tin Pan Alley/ Brill Building)!

Also during the period in which Mad Men is set,there was the influence on Civil Rights Movement by the Geenwhich Village Music Collective, incluing; Pete and Toshi Seeger,"Rambling" Jack Elliot, Woody Guthrie, Alan Lomax and "Leadbelly" to name a few, plus the Women's Movement and the "new wave" off Broadway productions!

all of the above where to have a huge influence on the Decades that followed, and I therefore am at a loss as to why none of these "happenings'" get a mention in this otherwise excellent series?

  • Posted on 26 March 2009
  • at 9:20pm
  • by C.S.

Wowza, John Ham!!!!!!!

  • Posted on 18 March 2009
  • at 4:12pm
  • by Servalan

To its many devotees (and I'm one of them!), Mad Men is flawless. If you don't like it, don't watch it. But PLEASE don't insult it by comparing it to Apparitions. Apparitions' aspirations were not the same as Mad Men's - it was made for a mainstream BBC One audience and needed significantly higher ratings than it got to survive. You may have enjoyed it, Suki, but it failed abjectly to deliver what it aimed for, haemorraging viewers week after week - whereas Mad Men has a small but fiercely loyal audience. I don't often say this - but Alison Graham was right!

  • Posted on 05 March 2009
  • at 2:32pm
  • by Zozi

I watched Mad Men to begin with, and although I knew it was good I couldn't bring myself to continue watching it, despite being an avid consumer of drama such as Damages, the West Wing, the Larry Sanders Show, the Wire etc. I was really disappointed not to like it, and thinking about it I think it may have been the unnerving darker underside that I found very unsettling to watch. It made the pit of my stomach hurt, which I found unusual. Perhaps that is why it wasn't more popular, though long may qualify drama like it be made and shown.

  • Posted on 04 March 2009
  • at 6:08pm
  • by D.S.H

I cannot believe that Mad men has not been popular. I watched the extras with the first series and was really impressed by how much care and attention was taken to every scene. Almost as if someone was taking pride in their work. Personally, I think things like lost and 24, that are really popular, are really over-rated and Madmen and Damages are less viewed but much better shows.

  • Posted on 04 March 2009
  • at 12:14pm
  • by Suki

I can't quite believe what I've read - Ms Graham banging on about how TV drama should take risks & what if the ratings aren't brilliant? Is this the same person who, in the first instances, wrote off Apparitons which was a great drama, beautifully acted & produced but seemingly not to everyone's taste and said to be cancelled because of low ratings. It was just the sort of drama Ms Graham appears to be want to be promoted and yet it was not supported by her in the RT, although she claims in another blog to have eventually enjoyed it. Bit late for that Ms Graham, so spare the hypocrisy please.

  • Posted on 03 March 2009
  • at 7:37pm
  • by GS

I can't reconcile the supposedly good ratings with the fact that me, all my colleagues, all my wife's colleagues and most of my friends watch, and avidly discuss, Mad Men. More so than any other show.

I've been wondering if the low ratings "fact" is merely spin put out by major TV networks at home and abroad to justify running cheap (and rubbish) reality shows in favour of costly dramas.

I read recently that when the intelligent quiz show QI was pitched to execs, they almost turned it down, deeming it not "inclusive enough". In other words, too intelligent for the audience. Well, now it's on BBC One because it's so popular. It's also an undeniable fact that the majority of "yoof" at whom most programmes seem to be aimed are either a) on Facebook, b) playing computer/video games or c) drinking on the streets. They're not curled up in an armchair like most of us middle aged folks.

  • Posted on 03 March 2009
  • at 6:44pm
  • by Jeff Black

Of course, BBC4 is never popular with the common herd at the best of times, what with being all interlekchal and that. Mad Men is also part of a new trend in drama for an unhurried, multi-layered novelistic approach (see also The Wire). Not every viewer is going to have the patience for this. They're more accustomed to fast food drama, where everything is spoonfed, happens where you expect it to and the bad guy always get caught in the end.

I don't really care if it gets lower ratings than yet another repeat of 'Friends'. It feels exclusive to be one of those 'in the know'. I just hope they can keep on making it to the same lush standards and the BBC keep buying it.

  • Posted on 03 March 2009
  • at 2:51pm
  • by Donavan

Mad Men and the equally fascinating Breaking Bad are both products of AMC, the basic cable channel in the United States. These two dramas are the first two original dramas made for AMC, and so they are unlikely to be cancelled any time soon. They are both recieving critical praise from both sides of the pond, and while the ratings don't compare with lesser 'Big Four' network programs, they are assured of a place in the AMC line-up for the foreseeable future. Hopefully BBC will recognise that they have some true quality in Mad Men, and therefore keep airing it. Maybe even at a better time next year.

  • Posted on 03 March 2009
  • at 12:11am
  • by M. R.

I'm not sure if you're referring to the American or UK ratings, but it is true that Mad Men hasn't accrued nearly enough popularity as it deserves. I just don't understand it, I really don't.

Also, don't be too sure that this show will survive solely based on its loyal, but small, fanbase. Many a great show has fallen by the sword in recent times; Mad Men is not exempt from the TV version of the law 'survival of the fittest'.

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