Mad Men season 4: meet the main players

SCDP: It's Thanksgiving 1964, and Mad Men's new ad agency Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is nine months old and struggling to make ends meet to pay the rent at the Time-Life building. As you can tell from the furniture in this shot, the question on everybody's lips is, what are they all up to? Photograph: BBC/AMC/Lionsgate/Frank Ockenfels 3/AMC/Lionsgate

Don Draper: After divorcing Betty at the end of season three, the brains behind the SCDP breakaway finds himself living in a dingy Greenwich Village apartment, being sent on drab dates and drinking far too much. But he even makes that look cool Photograph: Frank Ockenfels/AMC/Lionsgate/BBC

Peggy Olson: Olson's days as a meek secretary seem light years away. At the new company, Peggy is a senior copywriter spending her days wisecracking with handsome junior colleagues and devising nefarious ways to sell tinned ham. Progress! Photograph: Frank Ockenfels/AMC/Lionsgate/BBC

Roger Sterling: The chalk-haired smoothy is now in charge of helping the new firm keep whatever clients they have. Even if this means giving himself another coronary tap-dancing on David Ogilvy's chest, he's the man to do it Photograph: Frank Ockenfels/AMC/Lionsgate/BBC

Betty Draper: Betty took the train to Reno for a divorce last year. Now she's living with new fella Henry Francis in the Drapers' old Ossining house. One benefit, she discovers, of living with no-family Don, is the lack of a mother-in-law Photograph: Frank Ockenfels/AMC/Lionsgate/BBC

Pete Campbell: Pete had to be practically begged to come and work at SCDP, but now he's running accounts there he seems happy as a WASP in honey. Will his close proximity to Peggy in the small office relight old embers of lust? Photograph: Frank Ockenfels/AMC/Lionsgate/BBC

Joan Harris (née Holloway): Back in the office, "Red" is back in the swing of things making sure everything is in its right place as SCDP's office manager. Whether the impending Vietnam war will put things in the wrong place at home with her army doc husband is another matter Photograph: Frank Ockenfels/AMC/Lionsgate/BBC