Television Review

GOOD GIRLS REVOLT

Starring Hunter Parrish, Genevieve Angelson, Jim Belushi, Anna Camp, Erin Darke, Grace Gummer, Chris Diamantopolous, Joy Bryant.

On Amazon, available Friday

“Mad Men’’ took on many 1960s problems, but particularly the cultural, financial, and domestic tyrannies of gender inequality. We watched the evolving Peggy Olson struggle through the ranks of the boys’ club that was the New York advertising world. It was another disturbing chapter in the loose, baggy, and monstrous book of sexism, the back story of the many sexual harassment accounts that women have been sharing in the weeks since the release of lewd private comments by Donald Trump and Billy Bush.

Peggy was a “good girl’’ who quietly and unsurely, but unrelentingly, revolted. So do the young women in “Good Girls Revolt,’’ a new Amazon series that covers the same martini-lunch sexism as “Mad Men,’’ only this time in New York publishing. The show is based on the true story of the 46 women who, in 1970, filed discrimination charges against Newsweek (it’s News of the World on the show). When they weren’t fetching coffee, these talented writers did critical work on articles, but they were denied bylines. Bylines — the ego gold — were saved for the men, who rose up through the hierarchy while the women stayed on the ground floor.

It’s a great idea for a show, and, sadly, it’s a timely one, too, when you consider not only Trump’s “Access Hollywood’’ comments but the allegations that took down Fox News’ Roger Ailes. “Good Girls Revolt’’ — the title is both a statement and a command — dives into a bottomless subject, with an awareness that gender issues are deeply embedded in our psychologies, reaching into marriage, parenting, finances, and politics, as well as the workplace. The men in the News of the World office, led by Finn (Chris Diamantopoulos) and Wick (Jim Belushi), don’t just talk openly and crudely about the women’s bodies while benefiting from their skills; they sleep with them, leading to unsettlingly sticky work interactions and personal crises.

The series, created by Dana Calvo and inspired by Lynn Povich’s book “The Good Girls Revolt,’’ doesn’t start with the legal case, which the Newsweek women deliberately filed on the very same day their magazine published a cover story on women’s liberation. The first episodes focus on providing a portrait of the place, the time, and the characters, most of all three unfairly treated researchers — the fiercely independent Patty (Genevieve Angelson), the more traditional Jane (Anna Camp), and Cindy (Erin Darke), who is trapped in an oppressive marriage. We see them at the office, where they each face romantic complications along with professional restrictions, and we go home with them, meet their families, and learn about their birth control techniques. We also meet one of their inspirations, former employee Nora Ephron, played with the right intelligence and determination by Grace Gummer.

The problem with “Good Girls Revolt’’ isn’t that it’s not “Mad Men.’’ Despite the ambitious effort to show these women as individuals, to explore the ways the men hold them back and the ways they hold themselves back, the show feels generic. It made me think of NBC’s 2002-05 drama “American Dreams’’ as it relies much too heavily on 1960s cliches. Episode two opens with the requisite encounter group, during which the women are given mirrors in order to explore their sexual organs. We meet Patty’s sister’s fiance, who, of course, is about to serve in Vietnam, and he and Patty have a heart-to-heart talk with Marmalade’s “Reflections of My Life’’ playing in the background (key lyric: “Oh, but I don’t wanna die’’). It sometimes seems like “Good Girls Revolt’’ is assuming viewers are new to this whole ’60s thing.

But I can’t say these overused types and tropes completely ruin the show. “Good Girls Revolt’’ telegraphs its big points too loudly — conversations always come to a political, cultural, or social head — but it nonetheless offers low-key, idea-driven entertainment. As the story develops, I’ll be hoping the writers will move past the too-obvious ideas and artifacts and create more particularized, original situations and characters. When overwhelmed by triteness, good writers revolt.

GOOD GIRLS REVOLT

Starring Hunter Parrish, Genevieve Angelson, Jim Belushi, Anna Camp, Erin Darke, Grace Gummer, Chris Diamantopolous, Joy Bryant. On Amazon, available Friday

Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.