The Consumer Products Safety Commission has determined that cigarette smoking is hazardous to your health.  But that doesn’t stop the folks at Sterling Cooper Advertising from smoking like fiends.  Or from drinking too much.  Or from treating the girls in the steno pool like crap.  Or from stealing important documents out of each others’ trash.

Yes, it all seems vaguely familiar.  OK, we admit it, more than vaguely familiar.  Last night’s premier episode of “Mad Men” on AMC, which depicts Madison Avenue circa 1960, proves what we feared was true:  the advertising world has changed very little in the past 40 years.  For example, there’s Don Draper, ultra-slick creative director, pulling new campaigns out of his butt at the last minute, while hiding a dark secret.  He’s challenged by Pete, the 26-year-old suck-up, and his entourage of frat-boy executives.  The next big pitch is for a Jewish client, which is a problem for agency principal Roger Sterling because he’s never hired anyone but WASPs.  And everyone is scoping out the new girl Peggy, who’s hiding sexy ankles under a not-so-flattering dress.

Created by those hacks that gave us “The Sopranos,” Mad Men is all the rage.  “Possibly the best show you’ll see this summer” says Time.  Newsweek raves it is “. . . sumptuously filmed, you could turn down the volume and just watch the suits . . .”  And Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal says it’s “One of the best-written, all-around sparkling works to come along in many a season.”

The show is also blurring the line between the content of a show about advertising and the advertising content that supports it.  The commercial breaks are sponsored factoids about ads, such as “the first TV ad for prescription drugs ran in 1997”, followed immediately by a spot for fibromyalgia medicine.

Next week’s show promises a look into Dick Nixon’s presidential campaign (yep, another product that has been proven hazardous to your health). Mad Men runs on Thursday nights at 10 and you can get caught up at www.amctv.com.