# Mad Men

15 Hacker News commenters recommended Mad Men and 14 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 5 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Praised as one of television's highest artistic achievements; critics say the HBO Max 4K remaster is badly done, with poor color, cropping and altered music.

## Why people recommend it

- Considered among television's finest art (2 comments): "I do find it to be the show of highest artistic achievement." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49959169)) "the highest art that television has yet achieved" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49957450))
- Worth watching in any version (2 comments): "it exists and is a good way to watch the show" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46136078)) "I recommend you watch the TV series Mad Men" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46669319))
- Available on disc or free streaming (2 comments): "you can find disc versions of The Wire, Mad Men, The Sopranos etc." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49844479)) "It's streaming, for free, on Tubi" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46137828))

## What people warn about

- Rescan instead of proper remaster (2 comments): "wasn't mastered at all, just a re-scan of the original negatives at a higher resolution" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46139108)) "the VFX weren't redone properly after a rescan of the film" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49506492))
- Altered cropping and music (2 comments): "they seem to have also applied some weird auto-cropping that made “choices” no human doing the job would have" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46134252)) "The PAL release is already the bad copy (starting with season 4 I think)." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46134427))
- Careless upload and production mess (2 comments): "someone sent the "wrong file" to HBO Max, and it seems nobody checked it properly before uploading it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46134219)) "You could see cameras, crew, equipment, etc. total mess that showed no care for the material." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48359907))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Halt and Catch Fire](https://hackerapproved.com/p/halt-and-catch-fire.md): 166 recommend
- [Babylon 5](https://hackerapproved.com/p/babylon-5.md): 86 recommend
- [Silicon Valley (TV series)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/silicon-valley.md): 52 recommend
- [Andor](https://hackerapproved.com/p/andor.md): 52 recommend
- [The Wire](https://hackerapproved.com/p/wire.md): 39 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Mad Men", https://hackerapproved.com/p/mad-men/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).