Mad Men

Terrifically acted and gorgeously produced, this is a show that's both funny and frightening, that can simultaneously make you miss the '60s and feel blessed that they're gone.

The premiere jumps the series from 1960 to 1962, but it plays coy with most of last season's cliff-hangers, including the whereabouts of Peggy's son with married exec Pete Campbell (played with oily brilliance by Vincent Kartheiser). It's quite a tease, but the debut proves Mad Men is as smart as ever

Mad Men returns for season 2 in excellent form: There's a rich and active subtext in this series, you just have to discover it.

Far from devolving into soapy Madison Avenue pablum, Mad Men is painstakingly building its way to genuine greatness.

Besides the fine acting, writing and an attention to period detail that borders on the obsessive, what makes this show so ambiguous and pleasantly iridescent is narrative tension

There's a sense of gathering gloom as this exceptional drama gains steam in its second season, a feeling that the individual and his or her high-minded goals and values will be dragged under by the wheels of industry and the restrictive norms of the culture, all in the name of modernity and progress.

Mad Men beguiles like a Christmas catalog of all the forbidden vices, especially smoking, drinking and social inequity. Yet the series is more than a period piece. It’s a sleek, hard-boiled drama with a soft, satirical core.

As with any great series, Mad Men is becoming richer as these plot strands grow, establishing an engrossing serialized life beyond the hip, reverberating cultural references that demonstrate the smoking-drinking-closeted '60s aren't necessarily "good ol' days" to be mourned, despite the cheery Norman Rockwell image that cultural conservatives proffer.

As hard as it might be to imagine after last year's dazzling debut, this period piece about life in a mid-sized Madison Avenue ad agency during the early 1960s returns tonight looking and feeling even stronger, smarter and more focused than it was.

The vintage look carries a potent, contemporary kick. Here's the rare series that lives up to the advertising hype.

While this Sunday's premiere gets the season started a bit slowly, Episode Two is the rarest kind of TV show there is - one that you hope will never end.

Based on the first episode of the second season, "Mad Men" is still one of the best series currently on television, if not the best.

This season holds promise, not lacking in the detail that makes the series so enjoyable.

There is little in the way of "action"--it is possibly the slowest, most deliberative show on television, which is one of the things that makes it so lovely and mysterious.

It plays at its own pace, a little more deliberate than other TV dramas, and its strongest moments are often understated.

The tempo, thus far, is notably deliberate; the show's got mortality on its mind.

It's true that Mad Men is deliciously curated, from the omnipresent cigarettes to the rocket-cone brassieres (and casual sexism) to the cool modernist sets. But the subtle, deliberately paced drama has a wider sense of history.

If the season premiere is heavier on atmosphere than plot, by the second week, stories begin to kick into full gear, and you’re caught up again in the turbulent marriages, personal secrets and caustic office politics that make Mad Men so madly, marvelously mesmerizing.