Mad Men Season 3 (2009)
In the third season of this drama about U.S. ad executives in the early 1960s, the suits are grey, the haircuts are just so, and the sexual and workplace politics are Byzantine. The bonus features provide a feel for the period, with a documentary about the 1963 March on Washington in the closing days of legal segregation, and a 40-minute history of cigarette advertising. "It's like the Borg in … Star Trek," medical professor Stanton Glantz says of the tobacco companies. "They're constantly adapting."
The Prisoner (2009)
It's still not clear why anyone felt the need to remake the 1967 Patrick McGoohan series, but at least this six-hour miniseries, which ran for three nights on cable, sets itself apart. The hero (then McGoohan, now Jim Caviezel) still wakes up in a charming village, is still called Number Six, and must still deal with an interrogatory Number Two (various actors then, Ian McKellen now). And instead of the eccentric enclave of Portmeirion in Wales, the village is now in the Namibian desert. Can't miss that shift.