2. ...Or A Half Hour Drama
The Matthew Weiner who started Mad Men back in 1999 was a very different Matthew Weiner to today. For one thing, he didn't have the chance to make Are You Here, the box office bomb of a comedy-drama starring Owen Wilson, Zach Galifianakis and Amy Poehler that went direct to video in the UK recently. He was also not the showrunner of the most prestigious drama on cable television. Instead, he was a straight comedy writer working on the the short-lived Fox sitcom Party Girl, Andy Richter Controls the Universe, and then Becker, starring Ted Danson as a misanthropic doctor. That was the form Weiner was used to, and that's the form that most producers he talked to expected Mad Men to wind up in. One of the channels he took the show to was FX, run at the time by Kevin Reilly, who wanted to turn the project into a half-hour drama. Possibly with more of a multi-camera comedy feel, as Weiner's CV was principally made up of such things. Which would also have had a way smaller budget, and a very different feel to the movie-quality Mad Men we're all used to.
Tom Baker
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Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
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