What is it that sets apart Mad Men, Matthew Weiner’s AMC series about an advertising agency in the 1960s, from other dramas on TV? Is it the captivating ensemble of nuanced characters, who’ve grown and withered, loved and experienced every kind of loss in the show’s seven years? Is it the merciless scrutiny under which it dissects well-worn 60s tropes? The incredible wardrobe? (That doesn’t contradict my last point, the colours were fabulous…).

The truth is, our current television landscape blesses us with an abundance of these qualities – such high standards in characterisation, social commentary and production design are not so rare in what has frequently been dubbed a new Golden Age of Television. From the time of HBO’s emergence as an environment fostering high quality, censorship-free drama in the late 90s, there’s been an onslaught of intelligent, adult cable series, and with new players like Rectify, Fargo and The Leftovers all still in their early seasons, it’s clear that there’s no shortage of torchbearers for the post-Mad Men era (the show is currently airing its final batch of episodes).

So how can Mad Men stand out in this sea of quality? Its true trump card is this: Matthew Weiner understands how people interact, and he is unrivalled in his gift for bringing this authenticity to the screen. If that sounds like vague nonsense, allow me to be more specific. In reality, conversation can be a clumsy thing – we’re not working from a script, we rarely have the perfect response, and we often prepare our next lines as other parties speak and simply wait our turn. Weiner’s keen observation of this principle, and his ability to translate it into a medium where people are reading a script (in fact, he has an infamously low tolerance of even the slightest script deviations) are the keys to the show’s success, and position Weiner as the antidote to Aaron Sorkin and his ilk – I don’t mean disrespect to his often brilliantly witty scripts, but Sorkin is the ultimate example of a writer whose characters could only exist within the confines of TV-land.

It may seem false of me to highlight this quality in a show about rich, successful salesmen, the smoothest of smooth talkers. Yes, Mad Men is nominally about creative thinkers and/or slick pitchers, but more importantly the show explores the personal cost of a life spent selling an image of success, of family, of happiness. In their own lives, most of the characters are alone and unfulfilled. Glib tongues will not bring them happiness, and cannot prepare them for life’s everyday uncertainty and unpredictability; at all times, the script is rooted in this honest imperfection.

Much of Mad Men’s humour (and it’s a hilarious show) also stems from the winning combination of the script’s little absurdities and non-sequiturs, and each actor’s total inhabitation of their role. Characters constantly misinterpret one another, ignore each other’s references, and become delightfully incoherent as they get flustered or frustrated. Petty home or office arguments are a joy to behold, frequently ending in personal attacks or hopeless retorts (‘I’m tired of everyone telling me to shut up. I’m not stupid, I speak Italian’, fumes one character after being berated by her husband).

I’ve gone on for too long without mentioning the man at the centre of the show: Don Draper, man of mystery. In him, Matt Weiner and actor Jon Hamm have crafted one of the most iconic of modern TV’s array of antiheroes, a man who perfectly distils Mad Men’s themes. Impossibly handsome, and with legendary powers of persuasion and aptitude for creative work, Draper seems to have been drawn directly from the old ‘Men want to be him, women want to be with him’ line, but the falsity of his image quickly becomes apparent – Don is a lousy husband and father, and a pathological womaniser with a serious drinking problem.

At this point it’s important to talk about Mad Men’s ancestry. Modern TV history can be broken up into pre- and post-Sopranos; it was this show, with its rare combination of auteurial vision and huge ratings, which paved the way for the new pedigree of cable drama we’ve seen in the last fifteen years, and its influence can be seen wherever you choose to look (not least in the now-verging-on-ridiculous antihero vogue).

Of all the series which emerged from The Sopranos’ fertile loins, however, it is Mad Men which I consider to be its most direct descendant. Matt Weiner served as a producer and writer on the show for its final seasons, and the experience clearly left an indelible mark on him. Don, like Tony Soprano before him, struggles to balance his family, work and extramarital affairs. Both men are examined in many lights, as husbands, lovers, mentors and fathers.

The two shows are also linked by the thematic concerns at their cores. Characters are overcome by the uncertainty of their futures, and many respond by sinking into existential despair. There is a sense that Tony and Don are men of bygone eras, pining for their pasts and struggling to adapt to the challenges of the present. The shows are fascinated by the question of change; can a man truly change his fate? Can he change himself? Character progression is always honest and genuine, with both series understanding that personal growth is far from a linear path. Over the many seasons, we see countless setbacks, regressions and characters falling back on old vices. It can be frustrating to watch, but in the end this verisimilitude is what enables us to become so emotionally invested.

And the naturalistic dialogue that I was going on about? That’s another debt which Weiner owes the men and women of The Sopranos, with their confused logic, fallacious analogies and of course Tony’s infamous malapropisms (‘Revenge is like serving cold cuts!’), but here we also see a major way in which Mad Men steps out from the shadow of its predecessor. One of The Sopranos’ weaknesses was its tendency to view its own characters with great contempt, and if the show couldn’t take them seriously, then how could we expect to? Some of the cast mainstays spent six seasons serving as little more than comic relief, and numerous supporting characters never developed beyond a single dimension.

Matt Weiner, on the other hand, endeavours to bring each of his characters to life with a depth and richness that was reserved for the central five or six in Sopranos. Even one-time roles feel fleshed out, and we’re rarely presented with caricatures or ideological stand-ins. It’s this commitment to realism which gives Mad Men its dramatic power and lasting impact. The show’s surface is glamorous and sexy but its world is not, and in its details it simultaneously captures the regularity, but also the improbability of everyday life. Mad Men distinguishes itself from its competition by virtue of its flawless cast and uniquely observant writing, and it’s with a heavy heart that I’ll be bidding these characters farewell in two weeks’ time, and waiting to see if anything can fill the hole it leaves.

This week in monumental art it is everyone’s favourite internet artist who is it that is right it is chris (simpsons artist) and his first ever unsettling picture that he posted on facebook of homer a character from the tv show called the simpsons.

I’m sure many of you will be familiar with Chris’s idiosyncratic drawings and accompanying ramblings in the style of the above. Crude, childish, and bordering on the outright hideous, when he uploaded this bizarre illustration onto social media in early 2011 he managed, incredibly, to change the art game forever. 

The portrait is pretty disturbing, distorted but with none of the measured effect of caricature: an eye floats away from Homer’s face, his teeth are not delineated properly and there is an absolute disregard for any sense of proportion or perspective. Its caption – ‘DOG!’ – is short but sweet, the misspelling of Homer’s immortalised catchphrase complementing perfectly Chris (Simpsons Artist)’s strange deformation of this pop-culture icon. Close enough to be recognisable but hopelessly misshapen, Chris’s hamfisted drawings really do resemble the poor imitations of a child.

What’s most remarkable about this picture, especially as I sit here trying to write a serious analysis of it, is that the longer you look at it the funnier it gets. On first sight, Chris (Simpsons Artist)’s artwork confronts us with a pretty simple question: is this the talentless doodling of an innocent mind, or the parodic work of a comedic genius? Given the way his drawings have developed, becoming more studied and exaggerated, we can perhaps conlude the latter, and Chris (Simpson Artist)’s art instead becomes a comment on the condition of contemporary art in the internet age. Chris embraces that canted old criticism of modern art (yes, a child really could have drawn this), as well as social media’s role in providing a public platform for all art, the good, the bad and the ugly. It’s impossible to take Chris (Simpsons Artist) seriously, but that’s not to say that his work is not profound.

Chris (Simpsons Artist), whose real identity remains unknown, now has a huge following on Facebook, has had several pieces featured in the Independent, and in May 2012 his work was displayed at the IG:LU art gallery in Inverness. In this first picture that he ‘gone and done’, Chris (Simpsons Artist) challenged what it means to be an artist today – and what’s more, it looks like he did it on MS Paint.

In the opening scene of David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, we are met by vibrant shots of a suburban neighbourhood basking in the glow of a warm summer sunlight. As a man suffers a crippling stroke, the camera does something unexpected. We pan away from the catatonic victim and stumble, deep beneath the grass, on a hoard of crawling, festering insects. Lynch makes his point beautifully. Beneath the pleasant façade of suburbia lies a creepy and infested underworld; behind the picket fences and crimson roses are people we know nothing about – people riddled with secrets.

How much do we really know about our neighbours? Aside from the polite “good morning” and mandatory Christmas cards, do we truly know what’s going on behind the closed doors of people who live a matter of feet away from us? It’s a curiosity explored endlessly on screen. Ricky Fitts’ video camera in American Beauty reveals the peculiar nude workout routines of a man’s mid-life crisis; a vain young girl desperately seeking attention from men; and his own personal favourite – an insecure teenager who feels she’ll never find anybody who loves her. What his camera doesn’t pick up is his own father’s repressed homosexuality (masquerading as intense homophobia); Carolyn’s adultery; or even Lester’s infatuation with his daughter’s 16 year old friend. These are things no neighbour could ever know because they are hidden so well.

In 2004, Marc Cherry was inspired by American Beauty to create a TV series about the mysteries of one’s neighbours hidden behind the beautiful surface of suburbia, Desperate Housewives. With each new season, a different neighbour joined the street, always disguising a sinister past that threatened to break free. The picturesque Wisteria Lane became synonymous with closeted skeletons, and the female protagonists represented the “everyman”, inquisitive but clueless about the lives of their neighbours. It doesn’t matter how “ordinary” one may seem – everybody has secrets they want to protect.

Suburban life is all about exhibiting a shiny façade. It’s about Stepford Wives-type figures, perfectly prim and presentable, ready to offer a batch of warm cookies to passers by, whilst concealing the fact that they’re actually robots. It’s about the ideal family unit and community spirit displayed by Truman Burbank in The Truman Show – a man who is all the while unaware that his life is part of a scripted TV series. Jeffrey Beaumont never expects to discover a severed ear in his neighbourhood in Blue Velvet – why would something so disturbing ever find its way into his quaint little community? But as long as everybody feels safe – as long as they believe that no harm could ever come to their homes, the façade may continue and life can go on.

But how should we treat our neighbours if we do find out something unsavory about them? Todd Field’s Little Children is one of many films to deal with this difficulty. Should a community band together to enrage one another against a convicted paedophile living amongst them, or does he deserve a chance at anonymity and redemption? In Rear Window, is L.B. Jefferies right to take his suspicions of his neighbour – whom he’s been watching from across the street through binoculars – into his own hands? Does Claire have justification to slander her enigmatic neighbours to her husband and friends in What Lies Beneath? Curiosity always gets the better of us, it seems.

The most effective examination of the neighbourhood network is probably demonstrated by the soap opera. A myriad of characters share the screen for brief vignettes, each simultaneously contributing to a larger picture of a disconnected yet closely associated community. We all emit different personalities when we’re out and about to when we’re sitting in the comfort of our own home. This is what film and TV loves to explore. The medium lends itself perfectly. Just like Ricky Fitts, filmmakers are able to push their cameras deep into the private world of the most fascinatingly revealing place of all: the home.

★★★☆☆

With Avengers: Age of Ultron being the 11th Marvel Studios film since 2008’s Iron Man, one would be forgiven for assuming the franchise must have outworn its welcome by now. Fortunately, this is not the case. This summer’s most anticipated film serves as a suitable sequel to 2012’s The Avengers, but this latest installment in the Marvel “megafranchise” is let down by a convoluted script, with too many characters – old and new – and the general feeling that it is a ‘necessary’ installment in the series, one that doesn’t really further the overall plot.

Tony Stark has created a world-defending artificial intelligence programme, Ultron, chillingly voiced by James Spader, which instead begins to believe that it can only protect the world by destroying humanity. Ultron finds initial allies in two awesome additions to the cast, Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s super-fast Quicksilver, and the telekinetic Scarlet Witch, played by Elisabeth Olsen, who hold a grudge against Tony Stark, after his weapons killed their parents. The six returning Avengers are joined by the newly created android Vision, whose loosely-defined powers seem to be made up as the film progresses. Alongside the team are another entire cast’s worth of supporting characters from previous films. If you think such a large roster of Marvel heroes would lead to a rather overstuffed film, you’d be right.

The main problem with this film is that there’s just too much going on, and not enough time to see much character develop- ment and interaction which was so perfect in the first film. Even the new characters aren’t given much chance to expand. The producers clearly felt it was time the Hawkeye character be explored, yet when we see his life outside of the team, it feels it’s been shoehorned in just to please fans.

Thor’s playful mockery of his mortal teamates gets tiresome, and with Loki not appearing, this film may simply prove that Thor as a character requires a ‘yin’ to his ‘yang’. The introduction of a love story between Black Widow and Bruce Banner is scarcely touched upon and though well portrayed by Scarlett Johansson, it feels superficial, the filmmakers ticking off another box. The quips and witticisms of the Avengers are not lacking, but the moments of interaction between the teammates that made the previous film so memorable are few are far between, and this talented ensemble is given little opportunity to showcase their abilities.

There is a distinct lack of focus – one moment you’re in South Korea, the next you’re in London – and whilst the action is still as exciting as ever, and the visuals no less spectacular, they are entering the realm of Transformers- esque messiness. Ultimately the central plot is confused, and the problem resulting from the Avengers’ own actions renders the narrative somewhat redundant, meaning it’s a film that neither does much to advance the series’ overall plot, nor excels in being a particularly good ‘stand-alone’ Marvel film.

Ultimately, it seems a “necessary” installment, in that the audience needed to see the team together once more before they are divided in next year’s Captain America: Civil War. There is little inherently bad, and following up its 2012 predecessor would be a difficult task by any standards, but it’s both overstuffed and lacking at the same time. Avengers: Age of Ultron is enjoyable, but its convoluted script is wasted on outstanding visual effects and a talented cast.

When Cloud Atlas was released, it polarised critics and barely broke even at the box office. Based on David Mitchell’s wonderfully complex 2004 novel, the film contains multiple plotlines and narratives spanning six different eras, genres, and settings. Only the creators of The Matrix and the visionary director of Run Lola Run could adapt this supposedly “unfilmable” book, dividing directorial duties between them and assembling an all-star cast that includes Tom Hanks, Halle Berry, Jim Broadbent and Hugh Grant.

The film presents one of the most complex narratives ever attempted on screen. Mitchell’s novel was split into chapters devoted to each separate “period”, but the filmmakers decided to interweave and flip between each era simultaneously, accumulating a mosaic narrative of interrelated storylines. Some have called this “messy”, but it is one of the most heroically ambitious endeavours of modern cinema.

There’s an uncompromising depth and beauty to the sheer vastness of the narrative. We jump from explosive sci-fi action to a quaint Cambridge love story. There’s even a touch of Terrence Malick in the sprawling sublimity of the film’s central philosophy. It passes beyond mere sentimentality in order to ask more fulfilling questions about humanity. At its heart, there is the age-old “butterfly effect” question – how do our actions influence each other? Are we all connected?

It’s also very funny. The cast seem to be genuinely enjoying themselves. Broadbent is effortlessly hilarious when trapped in a sinister nursing home; Tom Hanks sports hysterical Scottish, Irish and English accents in his eclectic range of characters; and who wouldn’t want to see Hugh Grant as a can- nibal? It’s an immensely charming film.