Not sure that I agree that Mad Men can be fairly termed a Soap Opera. The writing and character development, casting, acting and directing are of too high a calibre to qualify.
That being said, perhaps UK soap operas are a very different beast than they are in the States...
I completely agree that Mad Men may well be the greatest TV series ever and as far as I’m concerned the only one with multiple seasons and a long trajectory which I have watched in its entirety. I still dip into random episodes from time to time and am always completely bowled over by their individual brilliance. When Mad Men was originally broadcast Don was both reviled and occasionally admired for his complete mastery of the act of attraction and seduction. I’m not sure that post “me too” notwithstanding the historical context he would be regarded in the same way. Strangely enough there is so much quality television nowadays across so many platforms that sadly I actually don’t know that many people who have seen Mad Men. What an amazing work of art they are missing.
Great piece thank you. I too worked on a soap during the pandemic and you evoke so well that strange unreality of being unable to locate the stories in any real time or space in relation to Covid. And your analysis of the brilliance of Mad Men is so astute, and allowed me to wallow again in my love of that show for a moment....
Brilliant. Two people not talking in the room can be equally dramatic (Becket and Joyce apparently spent. 24 hours together like that - not a word. "nothing to say!") . By the way don't you love the sad tragic Lane Pryce character, in Mad Men played to perfection by Jared Harris?
Feb 8, 2023·edited Feb 8, 2023Liked by Hanif Kureishi
Hello Sachin. I enjoy your father's writing, but I also hope that we hear more from you in the future.
The other day I was listening to an album called 'Time and Tide' by a female artist named Basia. If you were to attempt to place her geographically, based purely on her style of music, you would very likely speculate that her roots lay somewhere in South America. She is actually Polish. During an ephemeral period in the 1980s, when rah-rah skirts were briefly fashionable, she shared vocal duties in a band called Matt Bianco. 'Time and Tide' was her debut solo record.
There is a very lively song on the album called 'Prime Time TV' where she ponders the allure of the soap opera and concludes: “As we look inside their private lives, it's really me and you we're watching on the tube.”
At its purest, this yields those occasional episodes of East Enders, that put two well-known characters in a room together for half an hour. The second of these was very bold television, since it wasn't particularly rooted in any of the drama that was unfolding in the show at the time. It placed a pair of elderly characters, Dot Cotton and Ethel Skinner, centre stage, on a rainy afternoon, where they reminisced about their lives. Ethel recalled witnessing the death of her family, during an air-raid, in World War II. Dot confessed to being pressurised by her husband into having an abortion. At the end of the episode, Dot is under the misguided impression that Ethel has died in her sleep, and weeps for her. I would be willing to bet that there were some at home who wept along with her.
Dot and Ethel often seemed to irritate each other. Occasionally the scriptwriters allowed them to stray into the realms of caricature, in a manner that would have been unthinkable if they were writing for younger members of the cast. I remember both characters being imitated for comedic effect in the school playground. The episode that they shared humanised them. A very strange thing happened the following day at school: Everybody was talking about it. Kids were discussing a half hour of television that focused on the lives of characters their grandparent's age. That episode was talked about for years afterwards, though, as is the case when it comes to soap operas, the collective memory is fickle and eventually resettles on more recent developments. I wonder if you could get away with something similar to Dot and Ethel's episode today, when people happily cycle between distractions so freely.
Drama in soaps may be a distillation of real life drama, but the latter is just as compelling, nail-biting and heart-rending. June Brown (who played Dot Cotton) was God Mother to the musician Tim Arnold. When Arnold was addicted to crack, she paid for his flight to Thailand, where he successfully completed drug rehabilitation at the Thamkrabok Monastery.
I saw him perform years later in the guise of The Soho Hobo – a picture of health. He ended the show with a handstand which he held for over half a minute. (Gary Kemp, formerly of Spandau Ballet, made a guest appearance that night clad in triple-denim – jeans, jacket and cap. An extraordinary feat of fashion which, incredibly, he pulled off). One of the songs that was performed – Little London Lou – was a euphoric and open-hearted celebration of the life of Louise Cattell who died at the age of 21 from an accidental ketamine overdose.
I think of those opening lines from 'Ferry Cross the Mersey': “Life goes on day after day, Hearts torn in every way.” When it comes to poetically summarising the human condition, you can't get much more to the point than that.
I was going to say that I don't currently watch any soap operas, but I've just realised that I do. The drama, the spats, the all out wars between Internet personalities, that play out over multiple iterations of social media, and occasionally bleed into real life, are my soap, with its cast of heroes and villains, and grotesques, and its implausible developments.
And, of course there is the drama that enters our lives whether we want it to or not, and that we cannot walk away from, or turn off: A few hours ago a neighbour came to our door. He is unwell, seriously I think. His mobile had died. He doesn't have a land-line and needed to call a taxi to take him to the hospital for a scan. I have been wondering, since then, whether he is the kind of man who would accept the offer of support, or if he would shy away from such an overture and never come to us for help again.
Finally, there are those silent dramas that we carry with us through our lives and never mention to anyone. They may not be dark secrets or earth shattering revelations. They are things that, for one reason or another, we cannot bring ourselves to share, even (especially) with who are closest to us.
Perfectly written piece, thank you. Mad men brought me memories of the New York I arrived as a young girl in the 1950’s, at times it was too painful to watch. It was a time of ugly open prejudices against blacks, Jews, women, and people who were “other.” I recognized how perfectly written and acted it was, the music played like Vic Damone songs, was just the music of that era. But I couldn’t watched it. But after reading your posting, I will try to binge watch i.
Lovely insights - thank you. So true what you wrote about two people talking in a room and how the space between them flickers and shifts, and the pauses, silences and unspoken too. And as you say, the value of tiny moments which have deep roots.
You say your father's condition is temporary? Is this his diagnosis? Is there no permanent damage to his spinal cord? I certainly hope so. I would have considered him a lucky man to have such a brilliant and accomplished son but horrible accidents can happen to the luckiest among us. As for Mad Men it was so brilliant it's hard to believe it ever got green-lighted. I must re-watch it.
I read someplace that there is also very little mention of one of the last great pandemics, the Spanish flu, in the beginning of the 1900s, anywhere in literature. Are we collectively tuning these things out? Is it denial on a massive scale? Because years down the road it will certainly be the same with the Covid years and tv, movies, and books. I figure zombie movies and tv series will have years more of popularity because of it all.
People can be incredibly snobby about soaps which has always annoyed me. Easterners is my drug of choice - I’ve watched it since I was a kid. I was devastated when it went off air and then eventually had short episodes because of covid. How they featured the pandemic was a bit weird - I guess it had to be, not least because I don’t think anyone in soap land got ill. They attempted covering it in Casualty which I guess they had to given the setting but there was always a weird warning about dramatic license being taken. If you like stories it’s incredibly satisfying to have the different layers of stories - some evolving over decades. I liked that when Karim in the Buddha of Suburbia gets a job in a soap it’s his little brother (who turns out to be really surprising in lots of ways) that shoots down the snobbery about soaps. I watched Hollyoaks for years but did kind of age out of that. To me, such evolving stories and drama can be found in all sorts of places including Premier League football - it just depends what floats your boat. When soaps are good they are really really good. It’s just taste and fancy what you’re into. I’m interested in people, I like people and hearing about their lives.
Those spaces of time in our ordinary lives can indeed be wildly dramatic. Sometimes the drama is real, sometimes its simply generated by our crazy brain. You and your dad have the gift of shining a light on these moments we call life. Thank you 🙏🏼
Thanks for the look at TV writing. Yes, I did notice that shows suddenly changed and that actors were Covid-grouped in various scenes. Years ago, soap operas got me through stay-at-home moming . I still recall "Ryan's Hope" as a favorite.
You write:
"Art, Picasso reminds us, is the elimination of the unnecessary."
I'm not sure about Picasso's honesty in saying that. I agree that his early works were not his best (at least during his Blue Period, so to speak), but toward the end, his work seemed as if he just ran out of steam. (Or maybe he figured he could make money out of anything based on his reputation?) "Guernica" was semi-abstract, but I don't think he left anything out--a masterwork, unforgettable, but others? The ones with skulls? Meh, pass.
Mad Men is a masterpiece for sure. Not a day goes by that I don't think of the haunting opening titles, with that downward transposition of a two-note "theme" that conveys the darkness that the viewer will eventually discover to be the inevitable theme of the main character's life. The series says as much in what is left unsaid, as in what is stated. A marvel.
Not sure that I agree that Mad Men can be fairly termed a Soap Opera. The writing and character development, casting, acting and directing are of too high a calibre to qualify.
That being said, perhaps UK soap operas are a very different beast than they are in the States...
I completely agree that Mad Men may well be the greatest TV series ever and as far as I’m concerned the only one with multiple seasons and a long trajectory which I have watched in its entirety. I still dip into random episodes from time to time and am always completely bowled over by their individual brilliance. When Mad Men was originally broadcast Don was both reviled and occasionally admired for his complete mastery of the act of attraction and seduction. I’m not sure that post “me too” notwithstanding the historical context he would be regarded in the same way. Strangely enough there is so much quality television nowadays across so many platforms that sadly I actually don’t know that many people who have seen Mad Men. What an amazing work of art they are missing.
Great piece thank you. I too worked on a soap during the pandemic and you evoke so well that strange unreality of being unable to locate the stories in any real time or space in relation to Covid. And your analysis of the brilliance of Mad Men is so astute, and allowed me to wallow again in my love of that show for a moment....
Brilliant. Two people not talking in the room can be equally dramatic (Becket and Joyce apparently spent. 24 hours together like that - not a word. "nothing to say!") . By the way don't you love the sad tragic Lane Pryce character, in Mad Men played to perfection by Jared Harris?
My love to your Dad as ever.
Hello Sachin. I enjoy your father's writing, but I also hope that we hear more from you in the future.
The other day I was listening to an album called 'Time and Tide' by a female artist named Basia. If you were to attempt to place her geographically, based purely on her style of music, you would very likely speculate that her roots lay somewhere in South America. She is actually Polish. During an ephemeral period in the 1980s, when rah-rah skirts were briefly fashionable, she shared vocal duties in a band called Matt Bianco. 'Time and Tide' was her debut solo record.
There is a very lively song on the album called 'Prime Time TV' where she ponders the allure of the soap opera and concludes: “As we look inside their private lives, it's really me and you we're watching on the tube.”
At its purest, this yields those occasional episodes of East Enders, that put two well-known characters in a room together for half an hour. The second of these was very bold television, since it wasn't particularly rooted in any of the drama that was unfolding in the show at the time. It placed a pair of elderly characters, Dot Cotton and Ethel Skinner, centre stage, on a rainy afternoon, where they reminisced about their lives. Ethel recalled witnessing the death of her family, during an air-raid, in World War II. Dot confessed to being pressurised by her husband into having an abortion. At the end of the episode, Dot is under the misguided impression that Ethel has died in her sleep, and weeps for her. I would be willing to bet that there were some at home who wept along with her.
Dot and Ethel often seemed to irritate each other. Occasionally the scriptwriters allowed them to stray into the realms of caricature, in a manner that would have been unthinkable if they were writing for younger members of the cast. I remember both characters being imitated for comedic effect in the school playground. The episode that they shared humanised them. A very strange thing happened the following day at school: Everybody was talking about it. Kids were discussing a half hour of television that focused on the lives of characters their grandparent's age. That episode was talked about for years afterwards, though, as is the case when it comes to soap operas, the collective memory is fickle and eventually resettles on more recent developments. I wonder if you could get away with something similar to Dot and Ethel's episode today, when people happily cycle between distractions so freely.
Drama in soaps may be a distillation of real life drama, but the latter is just as compelling, nail-biting and heart-rending. June Brown (who played Dot Cotton) was God Mother to the musician Tim Arnold. When Arnold was addicted to crack, she paid for his flight to Thailand, where he successfully completed drug rehabilitation at the Thamkrabok Monastery.
I saw him perform years later in the guise of The Soho Hobo – a picture of health. He ended the show with a handstand which he held for over half a minute. (Gary Kemp, formerly of Spandau Ballet, made a guest appearance that night clad in triple-denim – jeans, jacket and cap. An extraordinary feat of fashion which, incredibly, he pulled off). One of the songs that was performed – Little London Lou – was a euphoric and open-hearted celebration of the life of Louise Cattell who died at the age of 21 from an accidental ketamine overdose.
I think of those opening lines from 'Ferry Cross the Mersey': “Life goes on day after day, Hearts torn in every way.” When it comes to poetically summarising the human condition, you can't get much more to the point than that.
I was going to say that I don't currently watch any soap operas, but I've just realised that I do. The drama, the spats, the all out wars between Internet personalities, that play out over multiple iterations of social media, and occasionally bleed into real life, are my soap, with its cast of heroes and villains, and grotesques, and its implausible developments.
And, of course there is the drama that enters our lives whether we want it to or not, and that we cannot walk away from, or turn off: A few hours ago a neighbour came to our door. He is unwell, seriously I think. His mobile had died. He doesn't have a land-line and needed to call a taxi to take him to the hospital for a scan. I have been wondering, since then, whether he is the kind of man who would accept the offer of support, or if he would shy away from such an overture and never come to us for help again.
Finally, there are those silent dramas that we carry with us through our lives and never mention to anyone. They may not be dark secrets or earth shattering revelations. They are things that, for one reason or another, we cannot bring ourselves to share, even (especially) with who are closest to us.
Thank you, this was lovely to read!
Perfectly written piece, thank you. Mad men brought me memories of the New York I arrived as a young girl in the 1950’s, at times it was too painful to watch. It was a time of ugly open prejudices against blacks, Jews, women, and people who were “other.” I recognized how perfectly written and acted it was, the music played like Vic Damone songs, was just the music of that era. But I couldn’t watched it. But after reading your posting, I will try to binge watch i.
I hope your dad is doing well.
Thanks.
Lovely insights - thank you. So true what you wrote about two people talking in a room and how the space between them flickers and shifts, and the pauses, silences and unspoken too. And as you say, the value of tiny moments which have deep roots.
You say your father's condition is temporary? Is this his diagnosis? Is there no permanent damage to his spinal cord? I certainly hope so. I would have considered him a lucky man to have such a brilliant and accomplished son but horrible accidents can happen to the luckiest among us. As for Mad Men it was so brilliant it's hard to believe it ever got green-lighted. I must re-watch it.
I read someplace that there is also very little mention of one of the last great pandemics, the Spanish flu, in the beginning of the 1900s, anywhere in literature. Are we collectively tuning these things out? Is it denial on a massive scale? Because years down the road it will certainly be the same with the Covid years and tv, movies, and books. I figure zombie movies and tv series will have years more of popularity because of it all.
That’s beautiful writing on the art of writing. Enjoyed it very much. Now I want to read more Sachin!
During the pandemic … the soap bubbles go on! How wonderful!
People can be incredibly snobby about soaps which has always annoyed me. Easterners is my drug of choice - I’ve watched it since I was a kid. I was devastated when it went off air and then eventually had short episodes because of covid. How they featured the pandemic was a bit weird - I guess it had to be, not least because I don’t think anyone in soap land got ill. They attempted covering it in Casualty which I guess they had to given the setting but there was always a weird warning about dramatic license being taken. If you like stories it’s incredibly satisfying to have the different layers of stories - some evolving over decades. I liked that when Karim in the Buddha of Suburbia gets a job in a soap it’s his little brother (who turns out to be really surprising in lots of ways) that shoots down the snobbery about soaps. I watched Hollyoaks for years but did kind of age out of that. To me, such evolving stories and drama can be found in all sorts of places including Premier League football - it just depends what floats your boat. When soaps are good they are really really good. It’s just taste and fancy what you’re into. I’m interested in people, I like people and hearing about their lives.
Those spaces of time in our ordinary lives can indeed be wildly dramatic. Sometimes the drama is real, sometimes its simply generated by our crazy brain. You and your dad have the gift of shining a light on these moments we call life. Thank you 🙏🏼
PS- I love Mad Men
Thanks for the look at TV writing. Yes, I did notice that shows suddenly changed and that actors were Covid-grouped in various scenes. Years ago, soap operas got me through stay-at-home moming . I still recall "Ryan's Hope" as a favorite.
You write:
"Art, Picasso reminds us, is the elimination of the unnecessary."
I'm not sure about Picasso's honesty in saying that. I agree that his early works were not his best (at least during his Blue Period, so to speak), but toward the end, his work seemed as if he just ran out of steam. (Or maybe he figured he could make money out of anything based on his reputation?) "Guernica" was semi-abstract, but I don't think he left anything out--a masterwork, unforgettable, but others? The ones with skulls? Meh, pass.
Mad Men is a masterpiece for sure. Not a day goes by that I don't think of the haunting opening titles, with that downward transposition of a two-note "theme" that conveys the darkness that the viewer will eventually discover to be the inevitable theme of the main character's life. The series says as much in what is left unsaid, as in what is stated. A marvel.