It has been over a decade since the American Movie Classics original comedy series, Remember WENN, has aired on television. However, AMC has not abandoned the idea of setting an original series in an era of yesteryear, as is proved by the current AMC original drama, Mad Men.
At surface level, the two series seem as if they could not be more different. Remember WENN was set in a small struggling radio station of off-the-beaten-track Pittsburgh while America was still recovering from economic depression and about to enter world war. By contrast, Mad Men is set in a successful advertising agency of mainstream Madison Avenue Manhattan while America is experiencing financial prosperity in the post-war era.
Yet, under the superficial trappings of the shows, it is clear that there are several similarities between the two original series of the cable network AMC.
Remembering Remember WENN
Remember WENN was the first original series to air on American Movie Classics. It was created and written by respected composer and author Rupert Holmes, who is most recently known for writing the book of the Broadway musical, Curtains.
The show was a heart-warming look at the golden age of radio and the individuals which staffed a small pre-World War II radio station in Pittsburgh. Many of the fifty-six episodes cleverly used plotlines which paralleled to modern concerns and issues. The series was introduced as a comedy, but its storylines soon became a combination of comedy and drama.
The weekly half-an-hour episodes depicted the daily lives of the workers who were employed at radio station WENN, against a backdrop of concerns about keeping a struggling radio station on the air with creative and entertaining broadcasts, while the daily lives of average Americans were being affected by economic depression and worries about the war in Europe.
The first two seasons were predominately comic with moments of poignancy, sweetness, and strong feeling. Driven by honest dimension, the diverse characters came alive, and they proved to be both empathetic and entertaining. The show somewhat “jumped the shark” with soap opera-like plotlines in its third and forth seasons, frequently getting the station involved with spies and gunplay, agitating the audience with multiple love triangles, and even bringing a main character back from the dead. However, throughout the run, Remember WENN maintained a higher quality of writing, acting, and direction than the average show of the 1990s.
The Emmy Award-winning series ran for four seasons between 1996 and 1998, until it was somewhat abruptly cancelled at the time of a management change and major overhaul of AMC.
American Movie Classics Changes
Since the cancellation of Remember WENN, the cable network AMC has vastly changed as a channel. It has shifted its focus away from airing movies from the golden age of Hollywood without commercial interruption to more often airing more modern blockbusters with commercial interruption.
Mad Men
This original hour-long drama series was created by television writer, Matthew Weiner, who wrote for both Becker and The Sopranos.
Introduced with more aspects of soap-opera from the onset, Mad Men focuses on the varied, but predominately jaded staff of a prestigious advertising agency of the 1960s.
Premiering in the summer of 2007, the series has aired two seasons to date, and it has won multiple awards and nominations.
Comparing Mad Men to Remember WENN
Although the two period series are set in different eras of the twentieth century, both depict the golden era of a particular median. Both are centered round a profession connected to entertainment and producing fantasy for the masses.
Remember WENN had several episodes about writing ads or selling a show to either its listeners or sponsors, while Mad Men is all about selling ad campaigns, pitching ideas to clients, and selling products to the public.
Each to different levels portrays the social changes and concerns of its time period, and each also draws parallels to today.
Both shows also focus on the varied characters and personality types of a collection of office workers. Uniquely, Remember WENN never showed its characters outside of the radio station set. The entire show entirely took place in this single set, excepting a few close-up shots of someone speaking on a telephone from another location. Mad Men purposely shows its characters in both the settings of work and their homes. The characters are also shown out and about in New York City, while Remember WENN only referred to other frequented venues.
Yet, perhaps the most noticeable similarity is between two of the leading men.
Don Draper and Scott Sherwood
Scott Sherwood (Kevin O’Rouke) was one of the prominent characters of the ensemble cast of Remember WENN and Don Draper (Jon Hamm) is the lead character of Mad Men.
Not only do both male characters have alliterative names, they are also both supposed to be the tall dark handsome type. Both are executives of intelligence and shrewdness with mysterious pasts, and both have a chief love interest named “Betty.” Don’s beautiful wife is Betty (January Jones), and throughout Remember WENN, Scott pursues wholesome girl-next-door radio station writer Betty Roberts (Amanda Naughton).
Of course, there are also many differences between the two characters, just as there are differences between the two shows, but it is interesting to note the multiple similarities between the two original series of AMC.
Original Series
Each of these original series are original ideas, and many of the similarities between the two shows may be due to formulas of plot and television. Yet, the overlap is great enough that it implies that the same sort of things seem to still attract viewers, critics, and AMC.
