Be sure to check out the inimitable Dorothy Rabinowitz's take on cable-show-of-the-moment Mad Men:
The life force of this period series, it becomes ever clearer, is business-the advertising business, the business of the interconnecting lives of the Sterling Cooper staff, all inextricably fused to the job, the place and career concerns. For, despite the grand dimensions that have been attributed to it as a work of social commentary, the series is at heart the latest addition to an old and honored television genre-the workplace drama. A highly distinguished one, to be sure, and far darker and more complex than, say, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show."
This is probably the reason, come to think of it, that the equally good NBC show The Office and Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End are also popular.