Mad Men, the BBC4 series set in a New York advertising agency, is everything we hoped it would be. Slick, smart (it’s from the man who brought us The Sopranos) and a note-perfect representation of early 1960s America – a time when women were unambitious and undemanding (or they took pills for it) and men ruled. In Mad Men, the blokes are openly sexist masters of the universe who smoke and drink for their country; the married women don’t work and don’t ask their husbands personal questions.

The team that made this show is clever. They know that we will be outraged by the glaring inequality, the casual sexism and the patronising bosses – “Now go home, do your hair, and tomorrow we’ll start afresh” – but that, at the same time, we won’t be able to resist comparing our lot with theirs. Women are much more equal now, but does the average man look as good? Wouldn’t it be nice to have your coat draped around your shoulders for you? Wasn’t it all so innocent and uncomplicated then? And glamorous – you could smoke and have a martini and wear a hat, all at the same time. They know that, chances are, you are watching Mad Men dressed in sweatpants with Jolen Creme Bleach on your upper lip, while the man in your life spoons something liquidised into the baby, and that you are thinking: “Did we take it too far?”

The brilliance of Mad Men is that, having drawn you in with lots of clinking cocktails, red lipstick and brilliantined hair, it starts to remind you exactly what it meant to be a lucky woman 40 years ago. Namely, that if you saw a psychiatrist, he would inform your husband of exactly what took place; that a mother would rather her daughter were killed in an accident than she survived, scarred and unmarriageable; that if you were a divorcée, you were a blight on the neighbourhood capable of lowering real-estate value; that you did not expect to share your husband’s hopes and fears; and men did not expect to marry women they found interesting or amusing – if they wanted that stuff, they found it with the other sort of woman, whom nobody married. That you might have a career, but that would be unusual and people would wonder what was wrong with you. A woman’s job was to make a man’s life pleasant and comfortable, period. And if that wasn’t enough, it was her failure.

“What do women want?” one character asks another, and the answer comes: “Who cares?” And these are advertisers. Just in case you ever fleetingly regret the passing of powder-room culture and the cardigan with full skirt, I mean.

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