Mad Men

SO MUCH television, so little time: Even if zombies didn't already make me nervous - when you're a TV critic, you don't need anything else nibbling away at your brain - the ratings for Sunday's premiere of AMC's "The Walking Dead" would probably have caused a slight shudder. I don't begrudge AMC a single one of the 5.3 million viewers who tuned in for Frank Durabont's smart but grisly adaptation of the Robert Kirkman comic-book series, which really begins to get interesting (for me, at least)

THE WALKING DEAD. 10 p.m. tomorrow, AMC. AMC has become the TV home for tales of a lone man in the midst of personal turmoil, from "Mad Men"'s crisis-challenged Don Draper to "Breaking Bad's" cancer-stricken meth dealer Walter White to "Rubicon's" perma-paranoid Will Travers. But none of these guys battle zombies. AMC's newest foray into original programming is "The Walking Dead," based on the Image comic created by Robert Kirkman and Tony Moore. And viewers beware: This is a new breed of horror television.

The big-buzz Sundance movie "An Education" is set in 1961, and as acolytes of "Mad Men" can tell you, that's no insignificant detail. It's a year that finds the West poised on the edge of enormous change - as a woman in "A Serious Man" (also set in the 1960s) puts it, it's a time when forward-looking people can take advantage of "the new freedoms. " Change is in the wind in "An Education," the story of an exceedingly bright prep schoolgirl named Jenny (Oscar nom shoo-in Carey Mulligan)

While the other networks are splashing around in the kiddie pool, ABC jumped into the shark tank at its upfront presentation Tuesday at New York's Avery Fisher Hall. The network will launch eight prime-time series, an even split of dramas and sitcoms, in the fall. It also made some major programming moves, including an all-new Tuesday night lineup, and a significant revision of Dancing With the Stars . As ABC president Paul Lee said, "We are taking some big swings . . . this season.

BEVERLY HILLS , CALIF. - We won't see Season 5 of "Mad Men" until next March - production gets underway a week from Monday - but AMC's already ordered Season 6, according to network programming exec Joel Stillerman. Stillerman also confirmed reports that Jon Hamm, who stars as "Mad Men's" Don Draper, will make his directorial debut in the fifth-season premiere. And while he was confirming things, he also noted the departure of executive producer Frank Darabont from "The Walking Dead" and the elevation of one of the show's writers, Glenn Mazzara, to Darabont's role as showrunner.

"MAD MEN" STAR Christina Hendricks (secretary Joan Holloway) is going to be making a lot of men mad. TV Guide reports she will marry Geoffrey Arend ("Trust Me") Oct. 11 in Manhattan. "It's exciting," Hendricks said. "I'm wearing a beautiful Carolina Herrera dream gown. " It's exciting for her? Few women on TV can fill out a gown like Hendricks. Arend will wear a Brooks Brothers tuxedo to the small ceremony, but no one will notice. Hopefully Hendricks and Arend will have better luck in wedlock than Usher and Tameka Raymond.

Interior designer Barbara Barry's style evokes classic Hollywood stars Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn: serene, sophisticated, timeless. The female form inspires her furniture designs. "Hopefully the hips aren't too big, there are good legs and a small waist," said Barry, describing a chair to an audience of about 200 at KDR Designer Showrooms in St. Louis. Vintage-style photographs of women flashed on a screen between pictures of her interior projects. Soft ivories, muted grays, and silvery blues, greens and amethysts make up Barry's typical palette.

"WE WERE 'Mad Men,' " recalls George Futak, the Vesper Club's maitre d' since 1990, talking about a much earlier era. "More business deals were done in the Vesper Club than anywhere in the state. " The 1950s and early '60s were an era of private dining clubs, male privilege, smoking at your desk and gas-guzzlers with sky-high fins. Now, the century-old Vesper Club has just completed a move from its intimate two-story Sydenham Street hideaway to the massive Racquet Club of Philadelphia on 16th Street.

AMC's "Mad Men" and FX's "American Horror Story" tied Thursday for the most Emmy nominations, with 17 apiece. But the two basic cable shows won't be facing each other in the competition for outstanding drama. Because while you might have thought both were regular series, the FX show, taking advantage, perhaps, of its anthology format, is competing in the movies and miniseries category, up against HBO's "Game Change," the History Channel's "Hatfields & McCoys," HBO's "Hemingway & Gellhorn," BBC America's "Luther" and PBS' "Masterpiece" presentation "Sherlock: A Scandal in Belgravia.

PART POLITICAL procedural, part seamlessly re-created time capsule, Pablo Larrain's "No" re-visits Chile in 1988, when brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet - under pressure from the international community - held a plebiscite on his leadership, which he had seized in a coup in 1973. "No" follows the quixotic advertising campaign mounted to remove Pinochet from power. Gael Garcia Bernal stars as Rene Saavedra, a brash young advertising executive who masterminds a media strategy that infused an inherently negative word ("no")