With The Kennedys having just finished and The Hour just started, the mid-20th century has never been more popular, or looked better. Tailored suits, ‘Vote Kennedy’ banners, cigarettes and Bourbon for elevenses… the trend started by Mad Men is still going strong.

Mad Men sold us the Sixties so well that it’s the show against which all other similar period dramas are now compared. That’s understandable though, as not only does it possess compelling scripts and characterisation, but it captures the glamour of the Sixties with a stunning attention to detail. Most important of all, it did it first. No wonder it’s influenced high-street fashions, mainstream pop culture (this summer’s blockbuster action movie X-Men: First Class, for one) and even Sesame Street (YouTube it, you know you want to). Naturally studios are catching up and trying to emulate the quality drama with their own similar period efforts.

The result is a crop of big-budget ‘50s/’60s-set dramas featuring solid casts peppered with serious acting clout and Hollywood stars: Dominic West in BBC Two’s The Hour; Christina Ricci in ABC’s upcoming Pan-Am; Greg Kinnear, Katie Holmes and Tom Wilkinson in the History channel’s The Kennedys. West and Wilkinson are particularly impressive in their respective shows – West playing the oily and privileged newsroom frontman Hector Madden and Wilkinson the fiercely manipulative Joe Kennedy Snr.

Such casting isn’t just to draw in viewers. Although these shows are historical drama, at their core they’re also personal dramas and they need great actors to carry both aspects. The Hour features Freddie and Bel’s rivalry as they cover the big stories like the Suez Crisis; The Kennedys sieves the political events of the decade through the politics of the Kennedy family; while on Mad Men, the fallout from the Kennedy assassination is shown mostly through how it affects Roger Sterling’s daughter’s wedding. It’s national history dramatised in small character moments. During the ‘50s and ‘60s times most definitely were a-changin’ and it’s fascinating to see how characters deal with those changes as well as their own domestic challenges.

Talent aside, one of the reasons shows set in this period are so popular is that they’re beautiful to look at. Whether it’s Television Centre or Madison Avenue, they capture a distinctive style and glamour that’s missing in the modern world, playing to a sense of nostalgia that we think we know but which never really existed as its portrayed. Everyone on Mad Men, The Hour and The Kennedys looks good; smartly dressed and walking around stylishly decorated offices.

Pan-Am, arriving stateside later this year, may just out-do them all in the looks department, with some lavish retro production design for the show’s Golden Age of air travel, oozing glamour. That’s what these shows do – they temporarily take us away from our own drab living rooms and lives and put us in an age where everyone and everything is easier on the eye.

Nostalgically and idealistically recalling a ‘simpler time’, it’s a combination of flash and substance – and perhaps it’s come at just the right time, playing to older viewers who remember growing up with Spam and ‘Reds under the bed’, but with plots intriguing and sexy enough to draw in a younger audience.

Mad Men didn’t just start the craze in smart mid-20th century TV dramas, it also managed to sum up why we like them. In the famous Kodak Carousel sales pitch scene from Season 1, Don Draper shows us the power of nostalgia, describing it as something that creates “a twinge in your heart”. It’s “a place where we ache to go again,” he says. With their stars, strong scripts and sharp suits, these shows do just that; make us secretly want to return to that time. Even if we’ve never been there in the first place.

> Order The Hour on DVD on Amazon.

Watch the trailer for The Hour…

> Follow us on Twitter to get the latest TV news and reviews first.