- Provides Inspiration for other shows:
Is Breathless just another Mad Men clone? The Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2013/oct/10/breathless-mad-men-clone-jack-davenport
In this regard, Matthew Weiner's Mad Men now seems established as the iPhone of small-screen writing. Breathless is the latest UK wannabe, and begins tonight (ITV, 9pm), in a week when another of the US impersonators started screening here: Masters of Sex (9pm, Tuesdays, Channel 4).
Both shows carefully follow the template set by Mad Men, of recreating a period from the middle of the 20th century with loving attention to the sorts of clothes, cars and conversations people would have had then, but with a knowing modern acknowledgement that such levels of sexism and smoking should probably not be attempted today.
The sexist profession being dramatised is gynaecology rather than advertising, but the central character – saturnine surgeon Mr Otto Powell, played by Jack Davenport– is very recognisably a transatlantic half-brother of Jon Hamm's Don Draper, even down to the suggestion – from the episode-one revelation that he keeps a gun in a drawer – that he has a secret and possibly even a secret life. Isn't Otto, after all, an uncommon name for an English smoothie?
This series (developed by Michelle Ashford for Showtime) has less room than its inspiration to make the central character mysterious – Dr William Masters, played by Michael Sheen, was a historical figure – although, like Don Draper, he did to some extent reinvent himself, being a stuffy medic who turned into a pioneer of sex therapy.
-Issues of Narrative
http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/a-final-appraisal-of-the-black-presence-on-mad-men-season-6
It’s a valid question, since the show takes place during the days of the height of the Civil Rights movement in America, a time when people of color were fighting more than ever before for equality and representation. The defense of some fans is that the series is set in a world where the presence of black characters at a Madison Avenue ad agency simply wouldn’t fit, a world where most blacks were the stock archetypes of elevator operators, nannies, and maids.
The defense of showrunner Matthew Weiner is slightly more nuanced. During Season 5 of the show, in an interview on Charlie Rose, Weiner addressed complaints about the lack of diversity on Mad Men by saying that his aim was not to tell “a wish fulfillment story of the real interaction of white America and black America.” For Weiner, historical accuracy was important - it seemed disingenuous to include more developed black characters on the show too early, during a time when most (white) people were still experiencing the civil rights movement not firsthand but through the images they saw on TV. Weiner added: “Hopefully when we get to the part of the ’60s [where race is more clearly addressed on the show], you won’t have trivialized the contribution of someone like Martin Luther King.”
