AMC's 'The Pitch' takes into an advertis...

AMC's 'The Pitch' takes into an advertis...

DAVID M. RUSSELL/AMC

From left, Ted Wirth, Tony Pace and Jeff Larson on “The Pitch”

IF YOU love Mad Men, AMC is hoping youll also love watching some real-life modern-day mad men, and women.

But The Pitch may be a tricky sell.

Its not that the show isnt well done. It is. It follows two advertising agencies as they compete for one account, a good setup because advertising is such a high-pressure business that the screen is always jammed with the Type-A personalities who keep reality shows lively.

The Pitch also reminds us, however, that filming real life almost never produces as compelling a story as filming made-up lives.

When you make it up, especially when you make it up as well as Matt Weiner makes up the characters and stories in Mad Men, you can tailor it so everything works together.

In real life, no matter how well you edit the material, theres always some expression, some bridge conversation or some summary remark that real-life people dont deliver.

Thats why reality shows almost all interview their subjects later, because those interviews fill the gaps.

The Pitch has those later interviews, too. The woman we follow at the McKinney agency explains that she decided to keep working after her children were born because, If Id been a stay-at-home mom, my whole family would have gone into therapy.

Its a good line and it also underscores the unsurprising fact that people in the ad industry tend to be driven, competitive and in a lot of cases neurotic.

The Pitch helps explain why.

The McKinney agency, a small outfit in North Carolina, is competing with WDCW, a much larger agency in California, for a shot at designing a new campaign for Subway.

Landing an account that size, even for the one specific task of promoting Subways new breakfast menu, would be a huge get for either.

We watch the whole process, from Subway explaining what it wants, to the agencies coming up with concepts, the presentation of those concepts, and Subways decision.

Most of the ideas, including some of the ones that are pitched, arent very good, which is instructive because it shows that coming up with good ad ideas is way harder than it sounds.

The only tools you bring to the game in this case, convincing 18- to 24-year-olds to break all their normal eating patterns and start coming to Subway in the morning are a goal and a lot of thin air.

Watching The Pitch should make more listeners appreciate just how elusive a great ad campaign can be.

Still, theres an extent to which watching ad development becomes like watching someone write a song or a book. Unless youre in the game yourself, the result is the only part you really care about.

The Pitch is quality TV for a modest demographic.