New York, the 1960s, a media office. Men with oiled hair and sharp suits. And women in short skirts, who are basically there to facilitate the men: their work, their egos and their penises. The cigarette smoke doesn’t hide the foul stench of sexism.
Nora, the new girl, has a few dangerous and revolutionary ideas about injustice and inequality. “It’s like you guys are fighting about the lower bunk bed in jail,” she says to her new female colleagues, “to make the guys … look better.” Meanwhile, out of the window and beyond, the 60s are happening: peace and love, pot, the pill, Iron Butterfly, Easy Rider, Vietnam.
It’s Mad Men, right? Actually it’s Good Girls Revolt (Amazon Prime). This is not Sterling Cooper but the offices of News of the Week magazine (which is not unlike Newsweek magazine, as it happens), where women are researchers and do all the work, and men are reporters and get all the credit and the bylines. The men get the researchers quite often too. Nora, incidentally, is Nora Ephron.
Good Girls Revolt’s closeness to Mad Men, one of the greatest TV shows ever, is the problem. Good Girls is good – an evocative portrait of sexism based on the true story of how, with the help of the newly created Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, female workers at Newsweek sued their employer for gender discrimination. The show gets better, more interesting, as the case gains momentum and as the reporter-researcher partnerships are explored (they can work well as writing teams, and even in relationships, if you’re OK with the power imbalance, the gross unfairness and the institutional subordination of women). If you have Amazon for Transparent (and you should), then have a look, it’s worth it: it will make you angry.
But it’s not as good as Mad Men: it doesn’t have the multiple strands, the understated artistry, the splendour, the characters that are so three-dimensional they actually elbow their way into your life. It is more obvious, less surprising, less original. If Mad Men were a band, Good Girls Revolt would be the tribute act.
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