OK readers, who’s the dude in the middle with the tasteful mustard jacket, silk cravat and sideburns? None other than our old pal Harry Crane, head of media at Sterling Cooper Draper (we imagine the “Pryce” has been dropped after recent events, but you never know: Stanley Pollitt, of BMP, continued to perform miracles after he had been dead for years).
Anyway, back to Crane and the latest series of Mad Men, which returns to US screens (but not alas our own, unless we’re Sky subscribers) on April 7th. The trouble with Harry is he’s such a fashion victim – a weak personality seeking momentary identification with every passing sartorial trend. In the past, that’s mostly meant a new pair of outrageously over-emphatic adman’s glasses. But here, in series 6, the preppy-groovy look has completely taken over.
Not much sign of that in Roger, other than slightly lengthened sideburns. And none at all in Don, who retains a circa-1959 cool dress sense. Let’s hope he’s finally disposed of the fedora. We thought that went out with President Kennedy. But Don was still wearing his in 1966. It’s one of those few, painful, anachronisms that crop up in the meticulously researched Lionsgate series. Another solecism was the otherwise elegantly restrained Pryce’s table manners when he was (as he thought) wining and dining his future Jaguar client. Still more so Mrs Pryce’s faux pas when she uttered, in a perfect cut-glass accent, the word “gotten”: no one in England has used that word since about 1800; it’s “got”.
Still, let’s not quibble over what remains an excellent series. We’ll all be glued to the screen. Once, at least, the DVD is released.
Meantime, here are a couple more shots to emerge from the studio…
