Matthew Weiner put a lot of research into Mad Men. Like, a lot of research. He began working on the show all the way back in 1999, when he was a writer on the sitcom Becker, and much of that early work focussed on looking into the social mores, history, fashion, and culture of the ad agencies of the sixties. Which is a lot more thought that's been put into the period TV shows made before Mad Men hit screens. Like, say, That '70s Show, which mainly riffed on cliché ideas of what the seventies were like namely flares and polyester and listening to terrible music. It was the anti-Mad Men. Eventually Weiner got AMC to agree on mostly unknown actors for his main cast, which is how Hamm and Jones and the like got their jobs, but before that apparently half the stars of That '70s Show came into read for various parts. Not Ashton Kutcher, but Danny Masterson and the like. It could've been a very different Mad Men.
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/
