Mad Men - Season 3

Thank goodness the sun has decided to pay this country a call because I think, without it, I (along with many others, I'm sure!) would have gone into a steady decline with the final eposode of the third series of Man Men having aired on Wednesday evening. TV viewing will be so much poorer for its finish. In many ways, this third series has taken more time to get moving and I do agree with other reviewers that its a shame that most of the story lines have revolved around Don & Bettys' seemingly doomed marriage. However, I think to do this sub-plot justice, time had to be spent. And well spent it was indeed, delving deeper into Don's past helps us understand so much more clearly the man behind the persona. Interestingly, whilst having more sympathy with Betty as the betrayed wife, at the start of season one, throughout this latest series, I have found her to be increasingly irritating. So much so in fact that when her determination to 'open the locked drawer' eventually pays off and she confronts Don with the evidence of his past, every bit of support I ever felt for her left instantly and my heart literally ached for Don's character. A truly superb piece of acting by Jon Hamm in this scene. Overall, viewed as a total series, I now believe season three to be more superior to both seasons one and two. However, I also hope that with season four (which the lucky US will start viewing shortly), Matthew Weiner does focus more on the other characters ~ they are all such interesting but so intrincially flawed in their own individual ways ... as are we all I guess! Again, to reiterate other reviewers, this DVD cannot be viewed as a 'stand alone' as without having seen seasons one & two, it will make little sense. However, viewed in its entirety, it is, in my personal opinion, without doubt quite the finest piece of television you could ever wish to see.

Mad Men is perhaps the most stylish and wonderful programme to come out of America in an age. It "feels" exactly as I remember the early 60s and the clothes are perfect. Series 3 follows the antics of those Madison Avenue boys and girls as they adjust to being a subsidary of an English company. It teases and plays with the back story of just exactly who Don really is and gives some hints as to how Dick became Don! (Oh watch the thing!) Joan continues to smash her way through the wild sexual dreams of every male on the planet and somehow still keeps the affections of the women! America evolves, the old certainties erode and the hints of the coming 60s revolutions appear. Drink gives way to dope, blacks start to come to the fore and women begin to see that they are locked in golden chains. The series ends on a titanic high that will have you cheering. Great, rollocking stuff and highly addictive!

I'm a late comer to Mad Men - someone let me borrow Season 1, and I thought nothing of it til the last two episodes. Then I was intrigued. Season 2 continued the intrigue and then I bought Seasons 3 and 4 just on the off-chance it would be worth the money, and it was. While a slower pace than "modern" programmes, once you realise that is purposeful, you relax and enjoy it a bit more. It honestly does get better as you watch more of it. I find watching the commentaries good as you can get an insight into what the director/producer/actor was aiming for in the episode.

Often, after the first couple of series, drama programmes can become a bit stale, but this is not the case with Mad Men. Season 3 is as good as the earlier ones, if not better. The characters are now fully developed and the storylines continue to shock and surprise. I think what puts the icing on the cake is the realism. Too often a drama series set in the 60's will still have something of a modern touch - you can spot the decade it was made just by looking a hair style or a part of the scenery but Mad Men looks totally authentic and the writers are not afraid to retain realism in the dialogue (e.g racism and sexism). Overall, a brilliant drama series. I'm hooked!!

If you have just read about this show but never actually watched it then just maybe you should. Yes for once this is a TV programme that seems to get a lot of rave reviews from the few people who have tuned in. From the ordinary everyday viewer to the sternest critic it seems to get a lot of praise. For once all of these people might just be right. Yes, it is a show that not a lot seems to happen in a single episode but like a lot of the best programmes things evolve over time. Set in the advertising world of 1960's New York the creators have done their best with convincing world set in this era with the writers and actors all excellent. Yes. A very good show as i have said but do not be tempted to just watch now and again as people i know have tried. To get the best from this you really have to watch MAD MEN seasons 1 and 2 as well as this one and just see all the slow moving stories move and evolve into epic television.

Only 1 disc (disc 2) included. Fake. Not a 3 disc set. Mis-sold

Mad Men is the best ever series that has been on television. Everything else will be a disappointment in comparison. The series captures the age perfectly in terms of attitudes and dress of the late 1950s and the early 1960s in the advertising industry in America. The series is cleverly written with plenty of character pauses and reflections. I now have all three dvds in the series and shall certainly look out for more in the future. I shall watch them again and again.

Brilliant - everything good that other people have said about this is true. I'm looking forward to Series 4 already. (One small speculative observation. The storyline features an unattractive British company that takes over an all-American enterprise and messes our heroes about. Watching this at the same time as the BP oil spill I suspect that the fictional series influenced US reaction to the real-life event, in the same way that the American perception of British history is based on Mel Gibson films. Did President Obama watch Mad Men? Bet he did.)

La temporada 3 de Mad Men en Blu-ray (edición UK) viene con subtítulos en español latino (al igual que las temporadas 1 y 2). Audio sólo en inglés. Los numerosos extras no tienen ningún tipo de subtítulo. La serie: imprescindible.

Universal hat ein Jahr nach dem Staffelerscheinen in den USA nun auch Deutschland mit der dritten Staffel versorgt. Die Box kommt im gleichen Material daher, wie auch die vorherigen Staffeln. Hier sind die DVDs aber nicht mehr jeweils in einer schmalen Hülle, sondern zusammen in einer dicken Hülle. Also die Hülle ist noch zusaätzlich von einer Pappbox umkleidet. Die DVDs liegen in der DVD-Hülle seperat hintereinander (keine Spindel oder so) und lassen sich gut herauslösen. Das FSK-Logo ist wie bei Staffel eins wieder aufgedruckt; schade. Allerdings besitzt die DVD-Box ein Wendecover. Allgemein ist die Box etwas schmaler als die der anderen Staffeln und bietet deutschen DD 5.1 Sound und englischen Stereo 2.0 Sound. Untertitel kann man deutsch oder englisch wählen. Die Menüaufmachung ist diesmal eine andere, aber recht gut gemacht. Die dritte Staffel besteht aus 13 Folgen, die wieder viel Tiefgang bieten mit sehr gelungenem Setting und sehr guten Schauspielern. Zudem gibt es einige äußerst unerwartete Wendungen, die der Serie neue Frische verleihen. Die Serie bricht (zum Ende dieser dritten Staffel) geradezu aus ihrem - durch die letzten Staffeln - gefestigten Rahmen aus und bleibt weiterhin spannend. Als Fan der Serie muss man hier natürlich zuschlagen. Also Bonus enthält die Box den Beitrag "Frischluft - Die Geschichte der Zigarettenwerbung" auf Disc 2 und auf Disc 4 weitere zwei Beiträge. Kaufempfehlung!!

VERY important story for our times, explaining what the 1950's and '60s were REALLY about. HIGHLY recommended.

The third season of MAD MEN, the extraordinarily well written and carefully researched historical AMC television drama, comes across much better on DVD than it did when it was originally airing episodically. The DVD set (again arranged in a different package format from previous seasons) allows us to get a stronger sense of the sweep of changes the show's creator, Matt Weiner, and his associates depict in the world of Sterling-Cooper, their fictional 1960s advertising agency. The season begins with a joke on "the British invasion": Sterling-Cooper has been acquired by Powell, Putnam and Lowe, a giant London-based international agency, which has placed a major new character, the sardonic Lane Pryce (the marvelous Jared Harris) as the New York firm's new financial officer. Don and Betty Draper, the series' major characters, have reaffirmed their commitment to one another through Betty's pregnancy with a third child, and in the first episode Betty's gruff father Gene Hofstadt (Ryan Cutrona, equally excellent) has had a stroke and must come to live with his daughter's family in Ossining. The genius of the series is its richness of detail both in period flavor and in the depth of the characters: much is left unsaid that speaks volumes about the players and the times, and its great to have an American series that doesn't tell us everything outright that's going on. It also allows for lovely moments of great beauty: a children's maypole dance, a drug-induced dream about a caterpillar, a nighttime view of the Sterling-Cooper bullpen late at night empty and abandoned. The season documents tremendous changes in American society in the crucial year of 1963: the ongoing Civil Rights movement, the change in attitudes towards gender and sexuality, and inevitably the assassination of JFK (which is handled with originality). The most difficult thing about the new season is that the characters of Don and Betty seem to be caught in a revolving door with their old problems and squabbles: Don is dishonest and cheats on Betty constantly, and Betty will not be happy with what her husband provides for her (which he thought was all that was expected of him). Yet the repetition of their tensions was almost inherent in the show's very structure, leading to this season finale's refreshing possibilities for new beginnings for both characters, which will be essential given that while they are both highly attractive and accomplished people neither of them are especially compelling now their depths (or rather their shallownesses) have been thoroughly plumbed. (Even so, Jon Hamm continues to give an especially intelligent performance as Don, showing us he's a much more complex person than the character himself is.) Much more intriguing are the series' other characters, including the Drapers' lisping daughter Sally (Kiernan Shipka), on whom nothing is lost; their tight-lipped housekeeper Carla (Deborah Lacy, in a remarkably subtle ongoing performance), who also sees everything the Drapers are up to; and Don's ambitious young associate Pete Campbell and his intelligent wife Trudy (respectively, Vincent Kartheiser and Allison Brie). The production values, as usual, are astonishing, and the use of music by David Carbonara is one of the series's greatest strengths. The DVD set comes with features such as documentaries on the March on Washington and the murder of Medgar Evers (both of which are key events in the season's timeline), and multiple episode commentaries, including many by Weiner, who is more intelligent and articulate (though no less chronically self-congratulatory) than many other cable series creators.

Boîtier en excellent état, livraison très rapide, vraiment très satisfaite. C'est une des saisons qui me manquait et j'adore cette série, l'époque, le casting, les histoires...