Let's not assume bygone days ever were what we think they were.
Nitpick, but this is a contradiction.
Contemporary fiction doesn't mean "current" (or least it didn't used to) it means "set in the time it was written".
I guess the word contemporary has been misused to the point of just meaning current or modern and I shouldn't nitpick it!
According to at least a few references, it very clearly applies to the two meanings. I couldn't find a single dictionary that excludes or seems to favor one over the other.
Your example of Braveheart, for instance, involves two views of the past through the lens of the _present_. So even in that context, both of those views are tinted by the experience and environment of the observer.
It makes the most sense in context, and the discussion is about a TV show and not literature.
Different nitpick: Mad Men first aired in 2007. Is an 18 year old show that stopped production more than a decade ago contemporary?
Many of the writers on the show have only ever worked in show businesses, which is its own mutation of work culture. Not many have actual worked in stereotypical corporate work situations.
Mike Judge (Office Space, Silicon Valley, etc) probably comes closest having started in corporate life and made a transition.
One of my favorite scenes:
Peggy: "You never say thank you!" Don: "That's what the money is for!"
It captures a lot of the mismatch in perspective between employer/employee boss/subordinate. You're there to do something for someone who is paying you to do it. That's as far as it goes (despite the constant human pull to perceive it as more).
Everything has gotten about a million times more expensive.