'Mad Men', Gene Hunt and Other Men

What do 'Mad Men' and 'Life on Mars'/'Ashes to Ashes' have in common? They are both among the best TV dramas in the last decade. And they both use the past to find a way of talking about men today.

'Mad Men' is the Madison Avenue drama set in 1960. The advertising men are neanderthals when it comes to women ('What do women want?' 'Who cares?'). The ad guys (most of them) are relentlessly sexist. And even the thoughtful Don Draper is cheating on his wife (as Kathryn Flett put it in her review in yesterday's Observer, 'In the early Sixties men had affairs with convertibles but went on to marry sedans'). They are also neanderthals when it comes to Jews and pretty much everything else. We are back before the Fall.

Move forward to Manchester 1973 and the BBC's cop drama with a twist, 'Life on Mars'. At first glance, you might have thought that the smart, politically correct Sam Tyler would be the hero in every sense, juxtaposed with the unreconstructed policemen from 1970s Manchester with their Stone Age attitudes. of course, it turned out otherwise. Sam Tyler was just annoying with his 'I told you so', Guardian whining. It was Gene Hunt (superbly played by Philip Glenister) , who caught viewers' imaginations. with his cheery political incorrectness.

Move forward to 2007-08 and most of this year's top films don't have much time for women. 'No Country for Old Men' and 'There Will be Blood' were about crazy men, men killing each other for drug money, for oil, anything they could kill each other for, and women were resolutely on the sidelines. Even in films like 'Charlie Wilson's War', 'In The Valley of Elah' and 'Sweeney Todd,' which had big roles for women, Julia Roberts, Charlize Theron and Helena Bonham-Carter played strangely subordinate, uninteresting characters. All these films were in one way or another what men do best in the movies -- they went crazy and killed each other, whether in the new West, old London or Afghanistan -- while the women stand around and go tut-tut or do some cooking (admittedly, in one case, cooking the bodies). Even 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' was a tribute to the monstrousness of the male ego, surrounding the central character with beautiful young nurses and physios in a way only a French film or a Dennis Potter drama could get away with. That left 'Juno', perhaps the most delightful and quirky film of last year, to take on that other male agenda: running from commitment (either after getting a girl pregnant or marrying a woman and fleeing as soon as she wants to adopt a child).

Whichever way you look at it, these films and TV dramas don't offer a very encouraging view of masculinity. In each case, men treat women badly. The only difference is that the TV dramas put it all in the past (1960 New York, 1973 Manchester) so their characters can say outrageous things without offence ('we're just showing how bad it was back then'), whereas the films let their men do their crazy male stuff anytime, anywhere. Just give them a razor, a gun or a blowing ball and they'll kill someone with it.

This cannot be good news for women in general or for Hillary Clinton, in particular. There is a kind of misogyny in the culture, and listening to PJ O'Rourke ripping into Clinton on this morning's 'Today' programme you could see why it's not great being a woman politician in America right now. She may be a senator for one of America's biggest states, but O'Rourke could still do his East Coast Bernard Manning stuff without a word of objection from his (male) interviewer, mocking her as the whiney, nagging wife when you just want to come home late after a few beers with the guys.

Where does this leave the women characters? Mrs Draper goers to a psychiatrist, the Helena Bonham-Carter character ends up in the oven, the woman who desperately wants to be a mother in 'Juno' adopts the child on her own after her husband has run off. And they haven't even started on Hillary...