#1. Mad Men
AMC
The year's best new show is a time machine: It
recreates the style, mores and ideas of 1960 with astonishing detail and
even more astonishing clouds of cigarette smoke. It's also a timeless
machine: Don Draper is a self-reinventing American protagonist in the
mold of classic characters like Jay Gatsby and Huck Finn. Unflinching in
portraying a sexist, un-P.C. time, Mad Men gives its men and women depth
and complexity. And that's not just blowing smoke.