Mad Men would've been very different as either a film or a half-hour FX drama, but the world could've been even more different. Mad Men could never have existed at all. Weiner had to keep plugging for the better part of a decade to get it made, having written that spec script in 1999 and the series finally premièring on July 19, 2007. Weiner took the show first to HBO, since that was the usual home of high-quality cable dramas and where he'd been working on The Sopranos. They turned it down. As did Showtime, the other obvious choice for the show. In the end every cable channel going turned Mad Men down. It was only thanks to an entrepreneurial new head of programming at AMC a channel which otherwise screened an endless stream of low budget, unpopular old movies - wanting to make the venture into original programming that Mad Men got made. And that only happened because they'd get taken off the air otherwise. Mad Men could've been totally different in many ways: the cast might've been all different, it could've been a film, Trudy Campbell could've starred. Or it could not have existed at all.
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/
