If You Don't Dive Into "Mad Men" DVD, You're Crazy

Lionsgate's first-season DVD set of Mad Men, AMC's first, fabulous weekly drama series, comes out today -- and if there's one thing that will make this long, hot summer of TV doldrums more tolerable, this is it...

Mad Men is set at a Madison Avenue advertising agency in 1960 -- when men were chauvinists, women wore bullet bras, and everyone smoked like the chimney tops in Mary Poppins. Three-martini lunches were common. So were office affairs, ambitious jockeying for position, and secrets. Lots of secrets.

Matthew Weiner, a talented writer on The Sopranos, created this series, and started out by getting the cast and look exactly right. Jon Hamm stars as Don Draper, a dashing ad exec with a beautiful blonde wife (January Jones as Betty), more than one woman in his peripheral orbit, and some deep, dark secrets in his distant past.

He and his new secretary, Elisabeth Moss as Peggy, are at the core of Mad Men, but it's populated by an office full of captivating characters. There's John Slattery from Desperate Housewives as Don's boss, Roger Sterling, and Vincent Kartheiser (the wayward son on Angel) as Don's office nemesis, Pete Campbell.

Most arrestingly of all, there's Christina Hendricks as Joan, the woman who rules the office using a variety of ploys and weapons -- sex appeal being no small part of her arsenal. At least a half dozen other actors and characters also shine in this series, which captures, with delicious wit and delightful details, 1960 in all its glory and folly, up to and including the Nixon-Kennedy presidential election.

The grace notes, throwaway lines and period-perfect props all add to the fun. If you're old enough, you may gasp with recognition, seeing once again items you'd long forgotten -- aluminum beer cans that you pierce with sharp-pointed openers, IBM electric typewriters with unwieldy plastic covers, plastic transistor radios. And if you're too young to remember them, you're the right age to be amused and fascinated by them.

After an overly obvious pilot episode, Mad Men evolves quickly into a brilliant, subtle TV show, a multilayered character study and an incisive social commentary all at once. Weiner has created a wonderful window into the past, and watching Mad Men on DVD, from Lionsgate (four discs, $49.98 retail), is the ultimate way to enjoy it.

Buy it here, at a substantial discount. Then, when it arrives, mix some martinis, sit back... and wallow.