While famous for his talents as a filmmaker as well as his encyclopedic knowledge of film, director Steven Spielberg is also an avid TV-watcher, notably of the AMC period drama political drama series The West Wing during the years that Aaron Sorkin worked as the show’s lead writer.

Celebrated for its stylish set and costume designs, cleverly interwoven plot threads, and attention to historical context, Mad Men was a tour de force of high-end television in the late noughties and early 2010s. It made A-listers out of several actors, with Jon Hamm, Elisabeth Moss, and Christina Hendricks being the main breakout stars in Mad Men’s cast. What’s more, it put mid-century period dramas on the map, laying the foundations for a range of shows set in the 1950s and ‘60s from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel to The Queen’s Gambit to take the streaming age by storm.

Steven Spielberg Once Listed Mad Men As One Of The Shows He Loved Watching

Spielberg Praised The Show For Its Writing In A 2009 Interview

Right from its early days, Steven Spielberg appears to have been one of Mad Men’s biggest fans. In an interview with Boston University in May 2009, Spielberg explained how he loved “watching network series that are well-written.” At the time, Mad Men’s third season was three months away from premiering on AMC, and the show was the first one Spielberg name-checked when discussing well-written network series. The director said he “always” watched Mad Men.

It may well be that Spielberg also watched the whole of David E. Kelley-created shows like L.A. Law, The Practice, and Boston Legal, as he said he watches “anything David Kelley touches.” Perhaps the legendary director is now a fan of Kelley’s most successful legal drama to date, The Lincoln Lawyer. In any case, no specific David E. Kelley drama has been singled out for praise by Spielberg in the way that Mad Men was in his 2009 interview. It’s hard to disagree with his opinion of the show, which has some of the sharpest writing of any TV series produced this century.

Mad Men Was Easily One Of The Best TV Shows On Television For Eight Years Straight

AMC’s Period Drama Raised The Bar For Network Television

Between 2007 and 2015, AMC’s Mad Men was rightly one of the most acclaimed shows on TV. Only one season of the show has a Rotten Tomatoes score below 90%, while its overall score is a whopping 94%. The series wasn’t just a critical darling, though, with its engrossing storylines around the fictional 1960s Madison Avenue advertising firm Sterling Cooper still enthralling audiences today, as Mad Men has experienced a streaming revival via AMC’s US partnership with Apple TV+, as well as Netflix internationally.

AMC might have been responsible for other all-time greats since debuting Mad Men 18 years ago, but their first original show remains up there with the very best.

The show arguably suits a streaming platform even better than its original home on network TV in 2007, when there was nothing else out there like it. Grounded in history but elevated by the brilliance of its characters, slick yet authentic, Mad Men transformed what was possible for a serial drama show to accomplish in less than 100 episodes, taking its place among the best TV shows of the past 20 years.

Don Draper remains one of the best-constructed lead characters in TV history. Meanwhile, the attention to detail in crafting the period elements of each Mad Men episode, complete with gorgeous cinematography and the kind of staging unprecedented for television at the time, makes the show an immensely satisfying watch regardless of its carefully thought-out characterizations. AMC might have been responsible for other all-time greats like Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead since debuting Mad Men 18 years ago, but their first original show remains up there with the very best.

Source: Boston University