It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Men world

Out on Don's beautifully-clipped lawn, which we'll see again in many other shows, including Desperate Housewives, Dawson's Creek, The Simpsons and most pungently, David Lynch's Blue Velvet, the modern world is gathering up like a boil that needs lancing, preferably with a bayonet.

Sharp suits, chauvinism and cigarettes notwithstanding, don't try to tell me this is a period piece. It's as much about 1957 as Macbeth is about the Scotland of the Dark Ages. Don has just sold Kodak (and himself) on a great gooey helping of the American Dream and in the process has helped invent the world we live in now, and here he is, feeling just the same as he did under fire in a lost outpost in the Korean War, or as an unwanted guest in his childhood farm home.

Meanwhile, another 'whore child' (Don's early description of himself) is being given away by the mother who doesn't want him - and who didn't know she was even pregnant although we did after that shadow puppet hump on the office sofa, didn't we and after Peggy started piling on the weight?

The second series airs in America from July. Just how many more there will be after that is currently undecided. I'm torn. As a riveted viewer and fan I want it to go on for ever. I love its slow-burn knowingness and dark, dark humour. As a critic I hope they have the good sense to go out at the top of their utterly brilliant game.

While they can continually come up with deft self-referencing touches like using the Eve Arden figure of the office to spark a discussion about Shirley Maclaine (another redhead) in The Apartment, then a contemporary film, I'll stay watching.

And how about seeing the patient-psychiatrist relationship here in comparison to what goes on in The Sopranos? The writers know full well the earlier series is now in our consciousness and are sharing the joke with us while using it as an effective (and soapy) device as the model (literally) wife sends messages via the therapist.

I am also enthralled to see how far the show can push, subvert and deconstruct the conventions of the ad world - the set-up known in the trade as 'the two tarts in a kitchen' scenario, for instance, which features in so many commercials and which has framed pivotal exchanges in the show.

Does anyone think I'm reading it all wrong? Does anyone else love the show? Are women really treated any differently now in the offices of Birmingham to the way they were treated in Manhattan half a century ago? I suspect not.