Apples and oranges, in certain ways, yes, but I sampled "Swingtown" because we were promised yet again, another journey into the American past, replete with the fashions, music, and mores of another time and place.

(Funny how time "works." "Swingtown" is set 32 years ago, in 1976. The 1960 of "Mad Men" is half that distance back from 1976, a "mere" 16 years. But we're talking entirely different eras, from the end of the buttoned-down 50s to the start of post-Nam disco.)

Despite some good casting (principally straight-laced-but-naughty Molly Parker from HBO's "Deadwood" and a shaggy Brit-turned-Yank from "Coupling" as her husband) and dead-on period detail, "Swingtown" vs "Mad Men" proves: its all in the writing -- story, character, dialogue, and mood. One has it; one doesn't.

Matters are simply too "linear" in "Swingtown," with our protagonist couple bracketed by swingers as their new neighbors and squares as their old ones. Nuance gets the heave-ho, and network-style broadness is the order of the day.

"Swingtown" makes two decisions against those of "Mad Men": (1) No real dramatization of the workplace and (2) the inclusion of many "child" characters, from kids to teens. The former reduces the show to a surface study of suburbia; the latter subjects us to the varying talents of some not-terribly interesting child actors with little help from the script. (The boy-girl suburban window Peeping Tomish stuff seems to link "Swingtown" to a more famous forbear: "American Beauty," but without that film's....uh, whatever. I didn't much like that, either)

Its all very unsophisticated, even though everybody is talking about sex. Or having it. But never on-screen.

The pilot episode moved steadily to its true historic network moment: the two lead couples evidently really "switch and swing." But with no real sex to show, the point is made with as much impact as my writing about it here. None.

Funny thing: the non-sexual sex seemed even more tame given that CBS is home to some of the most graphic violence and corpse-innard display on television over at CSI and the like. But it has been ever thus.

At this point, I'm sure I'll be told: "Mad Men" is what it is about, and "Swingtown" is what it is about, and what's the point in comparing them?

Perhaps the point is only in the revelation I received: given the near-equality of nostalgic period detail of the two shows, "Mad Men" proves to me that its quality is steeped in certain things -- writing, character, absence of important child characters (oh, I suppose that weird little boy Betty loves is important enough,but he doesn't have a STORYLINE), emphasis on adults being adults at work AND play. And don't tell me "Swingtown" was just a set-up pilot. "Mad Men" got it all done in ITS pilot.

Too bad. We could probably use a "Seventies Mad Men." Maybe eventually, "Mad Men" itself will fill the bill.

P.S. According to Peter Marshall of "The Hollywood Squares," Cliff "Charley Weaver" Arquette -- a folksy old comedian of the 60's -- attended some suburban LA wife-swapping parties regularly in that decade. The gag: bachelor Arquette brought a "professional" woman (he paid for her) to pose as his "wife", and swapped her out to extremely delighted other husbands.

Peter Marshall wrote that, so don't threaten me with a lawsuit!