I worry about my brain.

I feel the slow atrophy beginning. Unfounded, perhaps? Consider my unaccountable new taste for the anodyne, blue-eyed, skinny-boy bedroom funk of Maroon 5. Not even the breathy, gob-rotting ballads, rather the seedy, dry-mouthed morning after stuff, the nastiness veneered by efficiently catchy tunes. If that’s not enough, I love The Mentalist. I have a freakish, prematurely middle-aged crush on this man. It’s the accent, the passion for architecture, I swear. Nothing at all to do with the sledgehammer.

Unsurprising, perhaps, given my history of loving that which I really, really shouldn’t; hence my tenacious teen-movie habit, even more tenacious bad-dance-movie habit, my unreconstructed groin-aching adoration for Gene Hunt that defies analysis, for the angsty soundscapes of Keane when I can’t get behind Radiohead and find myself completely indifferent to Coldplay. As a pre-teen Trekkie, I feel my validation arriving. So, where does this place my devoted watching of the superlative Mad Men? Is this the one I can finally confess to without shame?

Tucked away on one of the BBC’s niche channels, and watched by a tiny handful of Ordinary Viewers, flanked by innumerable breathless critics, this one’s frustratingly difficult to dissect at work the next day, not least because all of your unimaginative mates watch Gossip Girl, Prison Break and, God-help-us Britain’s Got Talent.

It is with profound gratitude I’ve never grasped the appeal of Simon Cowell. Resolved in my loathing for Piers Morgan, so much the round-faced, braying, creatively impoverished void he should become a member of parliament, and the maudlin squawking of the token girl, I instead gravitate weekly toward the impeccably turned out urban crises of 1960s era ad-men.

At first glance, a jewel-like period curiosity from the makers of The Sopranos, which delicately unwraps another set of fragile male egos, I could rhapsodise on Mad Men’s subtle writing, the attention to detail, the terrifyingly coiffed wives and mistresses for whom style is armour, ammunition, and camouflage. That thinly veiled nastiness I like so much? Mad Men has it in spades, plus another of my favourite movie-land clichés, the misery and desperation behind the white picket fences of suburbia.

Rather than have someone find an ear in the middle of a manicured lawn, Mad Men makes the point with a thousand tiny moments of breathtaking cruelty, callousness, and simmering resentment. While the standout has to be Jon Hamm as the constricted, complex Lothario and war veteran Don Draper, every performance is pitch-perfect, from the thrusting, gimlet-eyed Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser), a snotty upstart who combines Brylcreemed boyishness with a ruthless, manipulative streak, to The West Wing’s Elisabeth Moss, and her compelling turn as Peggy. She grows from a diligent, painfully naïve addition to the typing pool, new to the big city, to Don’s right hand who might become as brilliant, and as stunted.

Even the least interesting character at the beginning of the first season, Don’s unhappy spouse, and Grace Kelly doppelganger Betty (January Jones) begins to show signs of growing into something more than a neurotic housewife at the end of Season Two.

With nary a shouting match or explosion in sight, Mad Men is frequently a bruising watch, unafraid to tackle the less palatable mores of the time. Witness the casual racism and sexism, the frantic smoking and drinking, without a single anachronistic nod to modern sensibilities. It’s the delicious, black-hearted flipside to the lacquered, pastel tinted 60s output of Doris Day et al, in which Manhattanites circle one another in an endless cycle of comic misunderstanding despite claiming glamorous jobs like interior designer and journalist, and makes the triumph and tragedy of Peggy even more riveting.

Better than all of that is the total lack of those dismal tics blighting popular US drama of late: the awful, faux-portentous, moralising voiceovers (yes, Heroes, Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City I’m looking at you). Oh, the bloated, epic series spans that result in frustrating, shark-jumping plots, the insistence on foisting Unresolved Sexual Tension on unsuspecting characters and long-suffering viewers, the use of plangent, intrusive incidental music to bludgeon the audience over the head in readiness for a Significant Emotional Moment, when the writing or acting aren’t quite up to the mark, as per Grey’s Anatomy!

In short, find it. Watch it. Listen to no one who tells you a series set among the beautiful, rich and unprincipled has no resonance for today. Mad Men is as much about the impulse for something truthful in people who aren’t sure how to recognise it, expressed in the yearning of at least one of Stirling Cooper’s minions to create something permanent. Do it before Mad Men gets the axe in favour of Lost, or Smallville.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve an urgent appointment with something set in a high school, perhaps starring Alicia Silverstone, or Zac Efron. Maybe even John Cusack. I’ll be back when I’ve relocated my higher functions.