Weekend TV: “Mad Men” Or “Pillars”?
Most of you cultured types will be sitting down this weekend to watch the season premiere of “Mad Men.” So eager are you to grab your latest dose of this critic’s darling that you may actually watch the episode in real time! I’ve long been a dissenter from the love showered on this extended photo shoot posing as a TV show. Sterling Cooper is the most incompetent, uninspired ad agency ever to blight Madison Avenue. “Mad Men” has a glossy look, a seductive mood, but scant grasp of the optimism and vigor of the Kennedy years, at least as they were described to me by my parents. While ya’ll are lapping up “Mad Men”, I’ll be enjoying “Pillars of the Earth” on Starz. The fact that the New York Times creamed over the Maddies” and yawned over the Earthies — led by Donald Sutherland, pictured — only increases my appetite for the latter.
