10 Shows Like 'Mad Men' You Should Watch Next[html]
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Following the conclusion of The Sopranos, Mad Men picked up the torch for prestige television in 2007 with layered storytelling, fascinatingly damaged characters, and impeccable period style. Set at an advertising agency in the 1960s, the show explored an America on the cusp of massive social change from the perspective of the people committed to preserving the status quo. Given our current cultural fascination with an imagined past in which women knew their place and white heterosexuals always knew best, the charming, complicated, boozy, and deeply damaged Don Draper looks a lot less like an artifact now than he did nearly 20 years ago—a reminder, I suppose, that good shows never really lose their ability to speak to us. In that spirit, here are 10 other rich, novelistic shows full of complex characters living though moments of change.
Mrs. America (2020)
From Mad Men writer/producer/Emmy winner Dahvi Waller, Mrs. America dramatizes (with tremendous period style) the ‘70s-era fight over the Equal Rights Amendment, the moment being, simultaneously, a high and low point in the hope for equity and autonomy. Cate Blanchett plays activist Phyllis Schlafly, who led the fight against the (once) broadly popular proposed amendment, weaponizing the ERA by tying it to radical and pro-choice feminists, homosexuals, desegregationists, and other maligned groups. She was at the forefront of the broad conservative cultural shift into a world that we're very much still living in, and it’s not a bad time to take a close look at the people who made basic equality sound radical. The incredible supporting cast includes Rose Byrne, Uzo Aduba, and Elizabeth Banks. Stream Mrs. America on Hulu.
Halt and Catch Fire (2014 – 2017)
A show that largely flew under the radar during its four seasons (and gets better as it goes along), this one offers up a heavily fictionalized portrait of the rise of personal computers in the 1980s, into the early days of broad adoption of the internet in the '90s. Lee Pace plays Joe MacMillan, the antihero lead who leaves IBM in 1983 to join the fictional Cardiff Electric. He's charismatic, manipulative, and not terribly tech-proficient, but nonetheless has dreams of building the next big tech innovation—starting by reverse-engineering the IBM PC. It's a show that comes up on any number of critical best-of lists and has a sick opening sequence. And did I mention Lee Pace? The timeframe here is different, but the world of men and women going a bit too far in business resonates. Stream Halt and Catch Fire on Prime Video.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017 – 2023)
Mrs. Maisel was one of Prime’s first and buzziest original series, a comedy/drama from Amy Sherman-Palladino (Gilmore Girls) about the title’s Midge Maisel (Rachel Brosnahan), a New York housewife of the late 1950s who discovers a talent for stand-up comedy. Inspired by the real-life careers of comedians like Totie Fields and Joan Rivers, the show is warm and funny, with great performances and dialogue; it also achieves something rare in being a show about comedy that’s actually funny. The tone here is a bit different from Mad Men, but the time frame and period stylings are a match, as are the trajectories of the shows' female leads: Like Midge, Mad Men's Peggy aspires to more than she's given to believe she should expect. Stream The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Prime Video.
The Hour (2011 – 2012)
With a rather brilliant cast and impeccable period style, The Hour charts the rise of a (fictional) BBC current affairs program, led by women and premiering in the middle of the 1956 Suez Crisis—a challenge in itself, as the government isn't particularly keen to have its missteps reported on (luckily, such censorship could never happen today). Producer Bel Rowley (Romola Garai) chooses war correspondent Lix Storm (the great Anna Chancellor) as foreign correspondent alongside less-accomplished anchor, Hector Madden (Dominic West), while scrappy reporter Freddie Lyon (Ben Whislaw) is desperate to get onboard. There are spies, murder, and plenty of then-current affairs spread across the show's two seasons, but the juiciest stuff takes place in the office, as internal politics and rivalries meet real-world drama. Stream The Hour on Tubi.
Masters of Sex (2013 – 2016)
Covering a historical time period of nearly 15 years, from the mid-1950s into the late '60s this is the (sometimes highly) fictionalized story of sex research pioneers William Masters (Michael Sheen) and Virginia Johnson (Lizzy Caplan), who's hired as a secretary but quickly proves herself capable of far more than taking notes and fetching coffee. With a style reminiscent of Mad Men, the show impresses by being far less lurid than its title suggests, instead approaching sexuality with a deep earnestness that occasionally borders on the schmaltzy. No matter: There are plenty of shows with lots of sex, and fewer that approach the topic with this degree of compassion. Buy Masters of Sex from Prime Video and Apple TV.
The Queen's Gambit (2020)
A surprising cultural phenomenon in the early pandemic era, Queen's Gambit gets a spot here largely for its impeccable 1960s period vibes—but that's not quite all. The coming-of-age period drama stars Anna Taylor-Joy as chess prodigy Elizabeth Harmon, fighting to become a champion on a global stage in an era where her talents were often dismissed, and while struggling with her own emotional problems and dependency issues. Without pushing the comparison too far, Elizabeth, like Don Draper, is fighting to reach the top of her field, making moral compromises while struggling with an intense alcohol dependency. How anyone survived the 1960s, I'll never know—though they'd probably wonder the same of us. Stream The Queen's Gambit on Netflix.
The Sopranos (1999 – 2007)
Mad Men's most obvious forerunner to the prestige TV crown, The Sopranos doesn't share much with Mad Men in the way of setting, but there are tonal similarities that might have a fair bit to do with the mutual presence of writer/producer Matthew Weiner, who earned Emmys for both shows. The Sopranos works as well as it does because the mob here works as a stand-in for just about any job in America—full of false promise and plenty of peril, requiring endless moral compromises in order to get ahead. Tony, like Don Draper, exists in a world in which his power as a boss, and as a man with very traditional ideas of what that means, is increasingly under perceived threat. Stream The Sopranos on HBO Max.
Succession (2018 – 2023)
The darkly comic story of the Roy family, owners of media conglomerate Waystar RoyCo, and the chaos and backbiting that ensue when patriarch Logan (Brian Cox) suffers a stroke, prompting the clan to begin fighting over what will remain after his inevitable demise. As one of the standard bearers of modern prestige TV, at least until its conclusion in 2023, Succession picked up the torch for layered storytelling and complicated characters both elevated and crushed by their circumstances. Both shows deal with broken people, shaped so deeply by their circumstances and settings that it only rarely occurs to them, and usually too late, that they might be capable of being better. Stream Succession on HBO Max.
