10 TV Shows You Didn't Realise You Were Following The Villain

It's all too apt that a TV show focused on the inner machinations of the marketing industry is itself a perfect example of effective marketing.

On the surface it's easy to view Mad Men's protagonist Don Draper (Jon Hamm) as an aspirational figure - he's handsome as hell, cuts a great figure in a suit, and spends his free time boozing, smoking, and sleeping with beautiful women.

But of course, anyone who watches more than a few episodes of the show will appreciate that Don is a dubious character at best, and despite the prevailing unhappiness which follows him throughout the series, hardly a sympathetic or heroic figure at all.

Beyond being an absentee father and freely philandering despite being a married man, Don fired Sal (Bryan Batt) for refusing to sleep with a client, consistently abused Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) throughout their time working together, and, uh, stole a dead man's identity to start a new life.

But what truly cemented Don's villainy was the genius series finale, where it's implied that Don's detour to a hippie commune led to him cynically re-purposing the tree-hugging image for Coca Cola's iconic "Hilltop" commercial.

It was an ending which confirmed Don to be an indefatigable emblem of gross, unchecked capitalism, of relentless ambition no matter the spiritual or material cost.