AMC's Mad Men is one of the most acclaimed shows in television — but what if series creator Matt Weiner had been able to tell a truly uncensored story? In a recent Ask Me Anything on Reddit, Weiner was asked how different Mad Men would be if it had aired on HBO — where he had originally pitched the series — instead of AMC, where he was required to conform to the standards of basic cable.
"HBO has an insatiable appetite for nakedness and violence so there would have been a lot more of that," wrote Weiner. "That may sound like a missed opportunity for some people but I have enjoyed the restrictions of basic cable. I think it has made the show strangely more sexy by implication and it was never going to be violent. The hero takes a nap in the first 15 minutes of the pilot."
He has a point. But then again, the HBO show he's describing is basically just Game of Thrones in the 1960s, with more scenes like this one:
Yeah, go ahead and sign us up for that too.