Get an Old Fashioned ready; Don Draper and company return to the box in your living room Sunday, April 7 at 9PM on AMC. Tonight’s season 6 premiere of Mad Men, written and directed by sereis creator Matthew Weiner, is called “The Doorway” and it is two hours long. “If you like the show, there’s a good chance you’ll like the premiere… It is different than last year’s in a sense that it was my idea and I was just trying to give bang for a buck to an audience that I didn’t want to lose because we’d been away for so long. This year it’s really constructed like a film. It is its own story and hopefully it foreshadows the rest of the season,” Weiner shared to EW.

The season’s key art pasted above constructed by illustrator Brian Sanders features ad man Don Draper facing duality. When we last saw Don he was letting his wife Megan pursue her dream of acting; granting her this independence might have let Don slip into his old ways of infidelity. The poster does a fine job of expressing Don’s dilemma: will he continue to love Megan and remain faithful in his marriage or will he succumb to his former self and take the hand of a beautiful stranger? There are many ways the illustration can be interpreted; what do you think?

Since it’s been a while since Mad Men last aired, jump after the break to catch up with a “where season 5 left off” video with commentary from Weiner and the talented cast led by Jon Hamm. Also there you’ll find more commentary from the cast and creator plus a couple season 6 promos. (Click here for more…)

Mad Men returns Sunday, April 7. There it is. The sixth season premiere is two hours in length, written by series creator Matthew Weiner and directed by executive producer Scott Hornbacher. The two-hour “movie” airs at 9PM on AMC. Also made public is that the second episode, which will air in Mad Men‘s regular 10PM slot, is written by Weiner and Matthew Igla and directed by star John Hamm. This marks Hamm’s second time helming an episode; he previously served double-duty on season five’s “Tea Leaves.”

In an interview with EW, Weiner briefly spoke about the highly anticipated premiere: “If you like the show, there’s a good chance you’ll like the premiere…It is different than last year’s in a sense that it was my idea and I was just trying to give bang for a buck to an audience that I didn’t want to lose because we’d been away for so long. This year it’s really constructed like a film. It is its own story and hopefully it foreshadows the rest of the season.”

When asked when exactly the new season will pick up following Don’s apparent flirtation with deviating outside his marriage, Weiner was typically coy with the NYT: “It will advance in time, as it does. I can’t say how much or how little. We’re coming off a period in Don’s life where he’s trying to normalize, and trying to have this relationship – a real relationship with this woman that he fell in love with. She expressed her desires, and that was a surprise for him. On this show, it’s a very rich, full orchestra, and we like to follow what is the next stage in these people’s lives.”

Check out new season 6 cast photos provided by AMC in the gallery below.

Tonight marks the season 5 premiere of AMC’s breakout drama Mad Men. Can you even recall the last time you watched an original episode on TV? To refresh your memory, the date was October 17, 2010. Those were the days…

I hope you’re excited to be reacquainted with the likes of Sterling Cooper Draper Price because tonight’s (3/25) premiere is extra long maxing out at two hours. It all starts at 9PM on AMC. Check out some cool stills in the gallery below, and watch a promo after the break.

Update: Last night’s Mad Men season 5 opener brought about record ratings for the period drama. 3.5 million total viewers tuned in to the two-hour premiere (that’s up a significant 21% from season four debut), crowning this episode the series’ most watched episode to date. And so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the important demo numbers are way up, too: in adults 18-49 the show drew 1.6 million viewers (an increase of 30% from the season four debut) and in adults 25-54 it attracted 1.7 million viewers (up 17%). Here’s one more tally for you to nod your head in amazement at: if you include the encore airing of the premiere, a total of 4.4 million people watched last night’s episode. These ratings can’t touch AMC’s other staple The Walking Dead but still I say, hot damn. AMC president Charlie Collier says, “Almost five years ago, with a focus on distinction and quality, AMC launched Mad Men as the first series in its commitment to original scripted dramatic television. Mad Men set the bar high and we are incredibly proud that it continues to engage audiences looking for unexpected, unconventional and uncompromising television.”

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It’s official: Mad Men returns to AMC from its (insanely long) hiatus on March 25. More good news: the season 5 opener will be the series’ first two-hour premiere. Take in the minimalist and grand new artwork above; it features a free-falling, silhouetted Don Draper displaced from the show’s famous title sequence. Now whip out your calendar and mark the 25th of March in red and black, you know you want to.

Exciting news, fans of stellar television! Today Netflix has nabbed exclusive rights to off-network reruns of the one of the most highly acclaimed shows on television. Mad Men is produced by Lionsgate TV, and according to Variety, Netflix has agreed to pay a license fee upwards of $1 million per episode to bring the show to its streaming subscriber base. All four seasons of Mad Men will hit the streaming service on July 27.

And in case you haven’t heard, AMC and Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner recently struck a deal to produce three more seasons of the period drama. Seasons five, six, and seven won’t find their way onto Netflix until their seasons have run their full course on the cable network.

[Via Variety]