So Mad Men is coming to these shores next week?
I should be glad, of course I should. The return of one of the best shows to come out of America since The Sopranos should be celebrated. In New York, the fifth season has apparently been greeted with themed shows and parties, people dressed in 60s garb, smoking cigarettes and drinking whisky sours.
After a hiatus of 17 months Mad Men is, no doubt, going to be under much scrutiny. Jace Lacob, television critic of the Daily Beast has already seen the 2 hour episode that kicks off the fifth season and says ‘It surpasses its expectations. It is beautiful, it is surprising and it is emotional.’
So why am I not celebrating?
I have, along with co-conspirator Janet McCabe, been writing about US TV for many years. Our first foray into the academic world of television was through our contribution to This Thing of Ours (ed David Lavery). It was a taste of things to come as all the American contributors were writing about the third season of The Sopranos while here, in England, we had to wait nearly a full year for it grace our screens. This was in the days of videos and when the Internet took forever to load a page of script. Episode guides came in books and even HBO had not quite caught onto the power of the web in spreading the word.
The last episode of The Sopranos aired in the States and we spent days flying across rooms switching off TV and Radio reports in case of spoilers. We did not want to know if Tony had died. We had a full 8 months to wait until the season started in Britain. We could revel in the non-end of a finished show if we wanted to.
The Internet changed everything.
American networks have now caught onto the fact that if they don’t screen a show in Britain at least in the same week as it is screened in America then everyone will download or stream it in our ever-increasing inability to wait. The watercooler show has gone global as first Ugly Betty and now Mad Men are screened within days of their first airing Stateside.
So, why am I not celebrating?
I should be eagerly anticipating the first episode of Mad Men, luxuriating in the thrill of the return of Don Draper and Joan Holloway. Longing for those louche lounge lizards with a flair for 60s sexism.
But no. Thanks to my old frenemy Rupert Murdoch I am now going to have to wait even longer to watch this season. It may premiere on 25 March in America and 27 March in Britain but, of course, it has been bought up by the evil telly snatcher and will only be available for subscribers to Sky.
Of course I could join the illegal downloaders and watch the series on my laptop. A practice that, out of some misguided loyalty to scheduled TV and the fear of being caught and losing my job, I have long avoided.
And then there is the sheer sumptuousness of Mad Men. How could I possibly watch this show on a small laptop when it was made to be screened on my large HD TV?
I could ask Janet to copy the show for me. Her inability to get any cable TV other than Sky is now paying off as she is able to remain true to our first love of HBO and US TV through her ability to tune into to Sky Atlantic.
But then there’s the adverts. As Janet as talked about elsewhere, the main issue with HBO and AMC shows being on Sky Atlantic is the interminable adverts. In a weird switch of cultures, it is now the Brits that suffer an overload in shows that were originally made to be screened without them. Imagine that.
In a strange Back to the Future moment it seems that I am now going to have to wait until Mad Men comes out on DVD before I can watch it properly. Which means that I am again going to be cutting articles out of newspapers and magazines while trying to avoid the content. I will again be flying across rooms switching off TV and radio reports to avoid spoilers. And, most sadly, when everyone else has those global watercooler moments I will have to walk away. A bitter Billy no mates with nothing to say about the latest, hottest season of the latest, hottest show to hit our screens.
Thanks Mr Murdoch. Thanks for everything.
Kim Akass is a Senior Research Fellow and lecturer in Cutural and Contextual Studies (Film/TV) at the University of Hertfordshire. She has published widely on US TV, is co-founding editor of Critical Studies in Television and is co-editor (with Janet McCabe) of The Reading Contemporary TV series for I.B. Tauris. She is currently working on a book about mothers in the media for I.B. Tauris and is webmistress of CSTonline.
