THERE’S A BUG GOING AROUND the US television industry. Reality shows are still popular and cheap to produce, since any half-asleep writer can pen the two-page outline behind each episode. But the quality bug started by HBO has spread to a raft of other independent networks, notably Showtime and Bravo.

AMC (formerly American Movie Classics), an under the radar channel has come up with Mad Men, a lavishly produced, well-written, period piece about Madison Avenue advertising executives, set in the 1960s. Created by Sopranos’ writer Matthew Weiner, the first season received a slew of awards and is now available on DVD. From the opening frames, you know you’re in for a treat.

The camera pans a trendy, downtown bar, where every patron is smoking a cigarette, smoke billowing up and around their heads in such copious quantity that it feels like a walk in the London fog. Authenticity is everywhere, décor, clothing, cars and dialogue. Women wear hip-hugging pencil skirts; men, single-breasted suits with narrow lapels and narrower ties, their hair packed with Brylcreem. It’s a man’s world; women serve either as secretaries or wives or mistresses. As Joan Holloway (Christina Hendricks), the head secretary says to a new hire, Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss), “The executives here want something between a mother and a waitress.”

While the visuals are rich and engaging on their own, it’s the writing and the characters that make this series hum. Within the first ten minutes of the opening scene, we know that racism is still prevalent in the United States, most execs drink hard liquor at their desks, women are second-class citizens and the principal character, Don Draper (Jon Hamm) has a mistress, all of it communicated through graceful camera shots and the minimalist, but smooth, conversation of the everyday.

Draper’s wife Betty (January Jones) suspects. At home with two kids, her life is a monotonous routine, broken by meeting local wives for lunch or tea to chat about their men. They slag a divorced woman who has moved in down the street, mooning convincingly about how difficult her life must be without a man.

But while some women remain trapped in the ‘traditional family’ bubble, others are spreading their wings for the first time. Draper is entranced with the owner of a large, Fifth Avenue department store, a woman of elegance, sophistication and style, who oozes power and self-reliance. Characters grow, change and run off in odd, unexpected directions.

Draper questions his wayward ways and wonders at the mental capabilities of the trophy-wife he married. Betty seeks extra-familiar activities, constantly brushing up against men who want to bed her. Peggy takes a risk and moves from a secretary to copywriter, much to the chagrin of her office colleagues. Set in an era when the hawking of product was equated with the making of capitalist empires, when men felt on top of an (artificial) world and women struggled to make their voices heard, it makes for compelling television.

Season one of Mad Men is now available on DVD. Season two is available for streaming online at www.ctv.ca and on DVD in July, 2009. Season three will be broadcast in 2009.