You can understand why it might take an actor a while to tackle another dramatic lead role on television when their first was a life-changing, career-defining part in a critically acclaimed landmark TV drama that ran for eight superlative seasons. But it is 10 years since Mad Men ended and only now is Jon Hamm re-entering the fray. He has mostly been busy with comedy roles in the intervening years. Now, he returns to the type of part that made his name: era-specific masculinity under siege from a prestige production bent on feeding us our own horrors back to us in chunks. This time it is about the fall from grace of a New York hedge fund manager, Andrew Cooper – think a modern, misogyny-lite Don Draper, but one who loves his kids and really is who he says he is.
The opening scene has Cooper coming to on a marble floor at the bottom of a Dynasty-esque staircase. He scrambles out of the pool of blood surrounding him, into the house’s swimming pool, and begins voiceovering to the audience. There isn’t actually a record-scratch and he doesn’t say: “I guess you’re wondering how I got here,” but that’s the gist.
