Mad Men at 15: how the genius advertising drama foresaw the death of the American dream
Most period dramas tell us more about the era in which they are made than the era in which they are set. Think of Downton Abbey, which arrived in 2010 at the height of post-financial crisis austerity, touting a gently consolatory, “Keep Calm and Carry On” noblesse oblige that fit David Cameron’s incoming government like a glove. Mad Men aired for the first time on 19 July 2007. Now the show is 15 years old, enough time has elapsed for its prescient shakedown of the passing American century to look more like an elegy.
As Don Draper
