At first, I wasn’t all that interested in watching Good Girls Revolt. That’s kind of odd, as I spent 20 years tilting at windmills in the very industry in which these “good girls” find themselves to be second-class citizens.

In the 60s, it was uncommon for women to be reporters. If they were, they were relegated to the “peach sheet” (The Miami Herald’s women’s section was printed on peach paper) or something similarly named. Features, recipes, celebrity news – the light and fluffy stuff that wasn’t read by serious men doing serious business.

The women who weren’t getting bylines in newspapers and magazines were largely relegated to being “researchers”. Which meant they did a lot of reporting and legwork that they then had to turn over to the male reporter, who got the full byline, no matter how much or how little reporting he’d done.

Feminist newswoman that I am, this is exactly the sort of show that should appeal to me. Coming so soon after the end of Mad Men, however, I couldn’t help but feel it was a female continuation – with Don Draper finding nirvana in the early 1970s and Peggy fully her own woman, now it was the ladies’ time. Substitute one media industry – advertising – for another – magazines – and we would now get to explore free love and pot.

Also, haven’t we done the 60s to death already? It felt as if all of my teens and 20s were spent with movies and TV shows galore taking place in the glorious days of yesteryear. What else could there possibly be to say?

Then, Grace Gummer appeared and I heard her introduce herself. “Nora Ephron,” she said. My ears perked up. If anyone could get me to watch this show, it would be the prospect of seeing Nora Ephron as she was first steamrolling into journalism. We’ve seen her in film before, as played by Meryl Streep against Jack Nicholson’s Carl Bernstein, in Heartburn as a married woman with a philandering husband. But this was young Nora. Nora Ephron of legend.

By the way? Gummer is Streep’s daughter. Boom.

Now, it wasn’t clear from the pilot if Gummer would remain in the series if it continued; it was a bit up in the air at the end of the pilot. She might just be a tool to get people like me interested. But it worked. In real life, this was the beginning of the end of this division of labor at Newsweek, turned into the fictional News of the Week for TV and legal purposes.

We open to find one “researcher” (the euphemism for these female reporters) named Patti dating a reporter at the magazine. Another “girl,” named Cindy, really wants to be a novelist andis working as what would now be called a photo editor. She’s married and uses a diaphragm, so no worry about children until she’s gotten her book under her belt. Except she’s late for her period and Nora suggest perhaps her husband put pinholes in it.

The head researcher, Jane, lords her status over everyone else, making sure the rest of the girls realize she’s the favored one. And Nora arrives at the magazine, where she’s quickly frustrated to find that she’s not only separate, but also not equal.

The background story here is the 1969 music festival at Altamont, where a riot broke out and people were injured. The old guard at the magazine don’t really see it as a big story – I mean, it’s just a music festival – but a good enough case is made to pursue it and see what they can dig up. It is, after all, a big festival in the “peace and love” community.

Turns out, there was no police presence and Hells Angels gang members were hired as security. The only one who can get that part of the story on the record? Our intrepid girl, GINA, who has to stand up her boyfriend on the night she’s supposed to meet his parents, so she can fly to California and talk to a backup singer who can give her the scoop. Of course, the singer won’t go on the record, but sends her along to this artist who will.

The artist is a sculptor who makes plaster casts of famous musicians’ penises. The story is Jane’s to work on for the reporter who always gets the credit, but she recognizes that if she lets Patti get this part of the story, it will benefit both of them.

The other drama going on is Vietnam. The senior reporter expects that the cover story will be his piece on My Lai. Vietnam has been the cover story 14 times already this year, though, and editor Evan Phinnaeus ‘Finn’ Woodhouse takes a risk on Altamont. It’s a change in the peace and love rhetoric and signals a cultural shift for our country, he believes. Once star reporter William ‘Wick’ McFadden, reads the piece, he reluctantly agrees. In fact, he loves it so much that he reads the beginning out loud for all to hear in the newsroom.

The reporter whose byline is on the piece looks a bit bewildered. Then we discover why: Nora rewrote it. That infuriates Wick. Nora rightly points out that what does it matter that she wrote it – it’s perfect, he just said so. But it’s apparent that doesn’t matter, Nora has stepped out of bounds and they’re going to make sure she knows it before things get out of hand.

Too late. Nora quits.

There’s a little more when Nora invites Gina and her married friend to a meeting where all the women end up taking out compacts and looking at their vaginas. There’s lots of smoking and drinking. There’s classic rock and mini-skirts and long hair.

If Good Girls Revolt manages to stay on track and be more about the women’s rights movement and the news industry and less about Vietnam and a changing America, this could be the next Mad Men. Mad Men was always, at its heart, about the characters and the ad industry and how it all worked – the 50s and 60s and associated world events were sidelights to the story.

Of course, if they keep Nora as a character, it’ll be hard to get me to stop watching.