Your next box set: Mad Men

Much has been written about the wonders of Mad Men, the show about a fictional 1960s ad agency on Madison Avenue: the fabulous characters in their gorgeous clothes; the workplace boozing, backstabbing, smoking and sexism. It's easy to forget the reason why they're all there - to pitch for contracts and come up with campaigns. The box set (of series one and two; BBC4 will air series three later this month) reminds you how absorbing, and occasionally thrilling, those scenes were. "Sex sells," Don Draper, the creative director, is told as he questions a poster featuring a short-skirted air hostess and not much else. "Does it?" he replies. "The people who think that think monkeys could do our job." Shown another sketch, of a businessman on a flight, Draper points to the man's window. I should see a city in the distance, he says, not just clouds. Every detail sells. It's a pitch to Kodak, however, that shows Draper at his most mesmerising. Kodak have invented the Wheel, a slide projector with a circular loader, but it needs a sparkier name. Draper fills one with his own family photographs and delivers a hymn to nostalgia. "It's not called the Wheel," he tells the Kodak execs, as his life clicks past in the dark, smoke-filled office. "It's called the Carousel. It lets us travel the way a child travels – around and around and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved." It's a scene made all the more poignant by the fact that his wife is leaving him. Adverts, says Draper, all sell the same thing: happiness. And therein lies the irony that gives the show its extraordinary power. Draper's life seems to have been drawn by his own art department – from his Stepford wife to his white picket fence – yet it has not brought him happiness. He seeks a fulfilling family life, yet yearns for adventure, in one episode crashing his car with a woman on his arm and a bottle at his lips. He can sell happiness, but he can't buy it.