Mad and bad

Well, we all fell about. Literally. I never use headphones to hear the sound, either on ITV, Sky Sport or some music channel which is the third choice at my gym, so I don't know what was said at Chav Central by the characters in jeans (always in jeans), but to me it just summed up the abysmal state of television and the intellectual level at which most of my fellow human beings conduct their lives.

Yes, I know Kyle is an easy target. Has been ever since he replaced Trisha back in June 2005 - whatever happened to her, by the way.

But it's not just at the bottom of the barrel that the sediment is collecting. This week I tried, I really did, to watch the second episode of Ashes to Ashes. It comes over just like one of those interminable list of C4 'best of' shows. In this case, greatest hits of the Eighties. The utterly confused plotline is just a flimsy hanger on which to display the decade's fashion, pop and style memories. It was, frankly, insulting.

Compare and contrast the police corruption displayed in Ashes with the Red Riding trilogy on C4. I suspected it was all over when John Simm, an actor of taste and discretion, jumped ship after Life on Mars. There the weird time layer plot was integral to the whole concept. Now it's just a lazy doorway into another nostalgiafest.

Yes, I may be an intellectual snob, but it gets worse. Let's just label Ashes mindless entertainment and dismiss it.

But a show like Damages has pretensions to the same kind of excellence displayed by The Sopranos, the Wire and Mad Men.

But like Lost, it seems to be making it up on the hoof. So much so that William Hurt has left. He couldn't play a character when he (and the writers) had no idea of what was happening, he said. Was he a goodie or a baddie? Both, it turns out.

Playing fast and loose with audience expectations can be exciting - but not when there's no guiding intelligence behind it - or when time switching is employed to no purpose but to confuse. Same thing happened in spades in Lost. One series was my limit there.

This obsession with switching plot and character with every show is just one annoying manifestation of modern small-screen drama. The other is never changing. Shows like Desperate Housewives and Friends make two or three variations on a basic formula and repeat them for series after series.

The worst possible examples of this come from English 'comedy' shows like My Family - descendants of the Terry and June and Bless This House brand of cosiness.

There is always the antidote of The Wire, of course. Hard going, but worth the effort.

Best thing on TV at the moment (except Reggie Perrin, of course) is undoubtedly Mad Men (above), which in the penultimate episode of the current series, has changed tack dramatically, unveiling a lot of back story stuff we saw episodes ago. It's called planning, Damages writers. You should try it.

Mad Men slips down like a superb cocktail, and in the same way, delivers deceptive kicks which you just don't see coming. Fascinating to contrast the two Hitchcockian blondes in Don Draper's life, one with a glacially perfect appearance, the other physically imperfect (the limp) but just possibly an angel.

Think Pete and his adoption crisis and his slow-burning relationship with Peggy and the child he doesn't know about. Think Grimm fairy stories, Jung's archetypes - depth like that is there if you want it.

But mostly it's just a great cliffhanger tale which treats the audience like adults. And has some terrific acting. Compare and contrast Alex (Keeley Hawes), the character and the performance, with the complexity of both for Joan (Christina Hendricks) in Mad Men.

And also, as a Facebook Friend and former colleague of mine observed the other day, look at Mad Men's great sense of style and fashion. Frocks to die for. It's a nobrainer, while Ashes it's just for people with no brains.