Mad Men Television Program

“Mad Men,” season premiere, AMC, July 27. The premise: It's 1963, and Don Draper (Jon Hamm), a 36-year-old creative director for Sterling Cooper advertising agency, needs a physical. He visits his regular physician, whom he hasn't seen in "quite some time," acknowledging that he has a high-tension job and that he consumes five alcoholic drinks and two packs of cigarettes per day. The doctor discovers that Draper has high blood pressure.

Couples are all over "Mad Men," whether real, imagined or on the rocks. Most of them stay in whichever realm is safest, bound by a silent pact of self-repression, the glue that holds together "Mad Men's" pre-hippie set of ethics. Some pairings aren't romantic at all; instead they share something deeper, a life philosophy. The AMC show's most powerful example, suggested in only a few strokes, is advertising master Don Draper (Jon Hamm) and underling copywriter Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss).

FOR AMC's "Mad Men," the network's wry summer drama about life, love and identity in a midcentury-era Madison Avenue advertising agency, the actors appear smooth-shaven and dress in skinny neckties and cordovan shoes. Their characters drink early and often. The actresses, trussed in tight dresses, wear pointy "bullet bras" and painful screw-on earrings. Their characters care less about careers than making a good catch and moving to Connecticut.

IF you want to feel good about being alive on the planet in 2007, watch the premiere of "Mad Men" on AMC Thursday at 10 p.m. For one thing, "Mad Men" is yet another great original series from a cable station previously not known for such (see also "Army Wives" on Lifetime). But more important, it is a dark, often sexy, often comedic reminder of how far we've come, at least socially, as a nation.

"Mad Men's" Vincent Kartheiser, 28, is a total clown and a deep thinker, often in the same minute. During our chat, the Minnesota native, who's lived in Hollywood for the last 10 years, told ridiculous fibs involving a secret affair with Mel Gibson (wait till US magazine reads that!), Justin Timberlake rocking it at clubs with a peg leg (don't ask) and showing up to the "Mad Men" auditions in drag (nope, more like a suit). Kartheiser also talked about his "Mad Men" (AMC, Thursdays at 10 p.m.

It was a good summer for "Mad Men," AMC's deceptively naturalistic fantasy of life in 1960 New York. A cocktail of romance, intrigue and really nice furniture set in the world of advertising, the series' critical success has earned it a second season. They ran it up the flagpole, and it was saluted. The first season finale airs this week.

"There's something to be said for making an effort. Buttoning your buttons and tying your tie and matching your belt to your shoes," says Jon Hamm, as he sips a glass of Rittenhouse rye on the rocks. He shrugs. "Hey, women do it every day, right?" Hamm -- who is either the next George Clooney or the reincarnation of Gary Cooper, depending on whom you ask -- should know. He plays the cryptic but dapper Don Draper on the AMC series "Mad Men."

In "Mad Men," AMC's much-lauded series set in a 1960 New York advertising agency, Don Draper, the agency's creative director, gives advice to Peggy, the ambitious new woman as she tries to think up ideas for her first ad campaign. "Stop thinking about it," he tells her, "and suddenly an idea will pop up." The line was just one of many references creator Matt Weiner used to show how creativity works in a commercial world.

The AMC drama "Mad Men," which paints a gin-soaked, cigarette-stained, ulcer-inducing picture of Manhattan's advertising industry circa 1960, is a period-perfect re-creation of the past, colored by the emerging trends of the present: When those hard-driving executives leave their masculine Modern office suites, they go home to the feminine Colonial Revival homes of suburbia. Call it an antidote to the midcentury minimalism that has become so prevalent in Los Angeles home design today.

The Television Critics Assn. Press Tour, the semiannual gathering of television journalists from around the country, began at the Beverly Hilton on Tuesday. We offer these dispatches. When "Mad Men" begins its second season on July 27, it jumps two years in time to 1962. But as for what will unfold in the rest of the season, even series creator Matthew Weiner is waiting to see. "We'll see how the election goes, what the mood is right now," Weiner told a standing-room-only crowd of reporters Wednesday on Day 2 of the Television Critics Assn.