'Mad Men' (BBC4/BBC2)

The hype about 'Mad Men' has been considerable. 'Utterly brilliant,' wrote Lynn Barber in 'The Observer', 'this could be one of the all-time greats.' 'Television has a successor to the Sopranos.' ('The Independent on Sunday'). Newsnight Review also put it up there with early 'Sopranos' and 'The West Wing.'

It's hard to see any link with 'The Sopranos' except that creator Matthew Weiner is a 'Sopranos' alumnus (he worked on the 5th and 6th seasons) and that for a certain kind of critic, 'The Sopranos' is code for classy TV (see Clive James's long essay in The TLS -- it's hard to imagine the TLS giving up that much space for any other TV show unless it's a literary critic evaluating the latest hyped BBC costume drama). People who have never heard of 'The Wire', 'Grey's Anatomy' or 'House', seem to go weak at the knees at the mention of 'The Sopranos'.

There's been much talk about the classy look of 'Mad Men'. A clever pseudo-Saul Bass title sequence starts it off and the directors are among US TV's finest. Alan Taylor who directed the first episodes has worked on 'Rome', 'Lost', 'Deadwood', 'The Sopranos' (inevitably), 'The West Wing', etc etc. Ed Bianchi worked on 'Deadwood' and 'The Wire', Lesli Linka Glatter on 'Heroes', 'House', 'ER' and 'The West Wing'. It's an impressive team. And as for the writing, Weiner wrote three episodes himself and co-wrote another three.

But usually when TV critics start talking about how good a TV drama looks, they usually mean there's something else they like about it, and that means two things. First, and above all, it's been sold like hell by the BBC press office and has done well in the States. Second, and these are mostly people who did English at university, it's got issues and themes and it's not just another cops 'n' docs show. And in 'Mad Men', it's not hard to see the issues. They sort of reach out and grab you by the throat. It's not what you'd call subtle TV. There's lots of smoking and drinking. It's like 'Good Night and Good Luck', the George Clooney black-and-white film about Ed Murrow, made for the small screen. The early Sixties sexism is non-stop and we have one of everything: one Jew (pretty and smart so no one gets too upset), one gay (in the closet, natch) and even a glimpse of a black man (a waiter in the opening scene). We get the idea: this is before the Sixties. It's as prehistoric as 'The Flintstones', all those middle class young white men running the world, cheating on their wives, going home to their families in the suburbs after drinking and chasing skirt in the big city. And the suburbs are not like 'Twin Peaks' or 'Desperate Housewives'. These are suburbs straight from 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' or 'Happy Days', as American as apple pie.

There is one problem with all this (though not for Lynn Barber evidently). Isn't it all a bit one-dimensional? Now we're all multicultural, less misogynistic, more tolerant, well, just altogether, better. Look at these dinosaurs with their cigarettes and their scotch and their stone age attitudes to women, gays and Jews. Wasn't 1960 a more interesting and complicated time? OK, they hadn't read Betty Friedan, but before we get too smug perhaps the nice people who run the BBC should just check how many blacks and Jews there were sitting around that table at Newsnight Review or at indeed at BBC4? They might not smoke like beagles, but some things have changed less than others.