PARIS (AFP) - Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner will talk about his soon-to-end award-winning US TV drama at a Paris festival next month dedicated to the world's best series on the small screen, the organisers said Friday.

The American writer/director/producer, who was secretive about his hit show while it was being made, will explain to the Series Mania Festival the dense layers of meaning and references folded into just one of the Mad Men episodes.

He will also separately talk about the influences of French cinema on the stylish show, which focused on Don Draper, a dashing New York ad man in the 1950s and 1960s who is confronted by personal and professional changes impacted by the watershed period he lived in.

Mad Men will come to an end on US screens in mid-May this year after a near-eight-year run met with wide critical acclaim, greatly boosting the prestige of American cable network AMC.

The success of the series contributed to the current wave of expensive, high-quality TV dramas borrowing production techniques - and, increasingly, actors - from the cinema industry.

The Series Mania Festival, sponsored by the city of Paris, throws the spotlight on some of those top-notch shows, often before they become widely known.

This year's iteration of the festival, in its sixth year, will also feature US director Lee Daniels, talking about his Empire series about a hip-hop family, and Hagai Levi, the creator of an up-and-coming US drama called The Affair that twists the two protagonists' perceptions.

Festival-goers will be able to catch episodes of intriguing new series from Scandinavia, Britain, Australia, Israel and Germany.

The Series Mania Festival runs from April 17 to 26.