Streaming services have a way of reviving love for old shows, and HBO Max is looking to entice old and new fans with this month’s addition of Mad Men. Instead, viewers have been laughing at the problems with the show’s 4K premiere.
Mad Men ran on the AMC channel for seven seasons from 2007 to 2015. The show had a vintage aesthetic, depicting the 1960s advertising industry in New York City.
Last month, HBO Max announced it would modernize the show by debuting a 4K version. The show originally aired in SD and HD resolutions and had not been previously made available in 4K through other means, such as Blu-ray.
However, viewers were quick to spot problems with HBO Max’s 4K Mad Men stream, the most egregious being visible crew members in the background of a scene.
The episode was “Red in the Face” (Season 1, Episode 7), which was reportedly mislabeled. In it, Roger Sterling (John Slattery) throws up oysters. In the 4K version that was streaming on HBO Max, viewers could see someone pumping a vomit hose to make the fake puke flow.
The Hollywood Reporter, citing an anonymous source, said that the error happened because Mad Men production company Lionsgate gave HBO Max the wrong file. The publication reported that Lionsgate “was working on getting HBO Max the correct file(s)” and was readying to provide them at approximately 10 a.m. PT today. Neither Lionsgate nor HBO Max has commented.
The blunder is likely to be fixed for all viewers soon. There were no problems with the HD versions of HBO Max’s Mad Men stream. However, the mix-up is a revealing look at the complexities of bringing a show or movie to a new distribution platform, how moving to wider aspect ratios or higher resolutions can affect shots, and how important human reviews are for avoiding embarrassing mistakes.
There have been other instances of show remasters inadvertently showing viewers how the sausage was made. For example, a 2020 HD remaster of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2001) that took the show from a 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9 had episodes with visible crew and equipment in addition to “brightly lit and overexposed scenes,” Screen Rant reported at the time. When Seinfeld (1989–1998) came to Netflix, a plot-centric pothole that annoyed George Costanza (Jason Alexander) was cut from some shots, as noted by Wired.
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