Deadwood - The Complete First Season

Outstanding series, but, be warned, this show is not for the children. I believe it to be far more realistic than most westerns generally have been and, though there is a great deal of creative liscense, the essence of the show is at least somewhat historically accurate.

The acting is great. The production is great. The stories are great. The morality - well - they were all violating the law by just being there, right?

Let me preface this critique by saying that I don't have my TV hooked up to receive any TV programs. That said, my partner and I decided to rent this series in the dull grey moths of winter, and we both fell in love with it. Never have I found a more authentic portrayal of the "Wild West." Generally speaking, westerns seem to combine too many parts kiddy western, lame plots, boring and/or undefined characters, and inacurate history. Deadwood is none of these, but instead feels so authentic you feel the gold dust in your lungs and the dirt under your fingernails. I'm rather a history buff, and really get snobby when dramatizations fall short of the grandeur of the actual event. Deadwood delivers again. Never has American history been so exciting! In other critics' defenses I will admit that the very first episode is a bit hard to follow...as with ANY series, TV or otherwise. I was so impressed with HBO (and so devistated when we discovered they were discontinuing the series) that my partner and I got hooked on Rome, the other big deal show. Almost as good, but Deadwood gets you in your gut. I got so turned on to the series, in fact, that I hesitatingly told my parents, my dad having grown up on kiddy westerns and searching for a certain...something in other "westerns." They both fell for Deadwood as hard as my partner and I did. So go forth, enjoy, sink your teeth into something gritty, gripping, and golden. Unless yer yeller.

Hard on the heels of the cinematic, mystical Carnivale, HBO pull out a gritty, puke-, blood, cuss- and mud-soaked western, tracing in quasi-historical fashion some of the days of Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Seth Bullock and others in a pre-confederated gold prospecting camp called Deadwood, in what is nowadays Dakota. Despite their manifold differences there is a commonness of sepia tone, and both plumb equally cavernous philosophical depths: Intellectually, Deadwood is a meditation on anarchy in which Hobbesian pessimism is tested but falsified: in Deadwood, decent men (and strong women) prevail despite the poor odds - as long as you are prepared to be openminded about exactly what might count for decentness, at any rate.

The first episode takes a while to catch fire - the brutalilty and nastiness is heaped on, and the narrative is spent establishing the hard-man credentials of most of the cast, and the dope-addled naivete of Alma Garrett and her patsy-written-all-over-him husband, fresh from New York to seek their fortune in the hills with the rest of the lowlife.

But soon some things become clear. Primarily among them, Ian McShane - once BBC's loveable rogue antique dealer Lovejoy (I kid you not) has a peach of a part as the dastardly, but all the same loveable, Gem Saloon owner Al Swearengen, and he utterly nails it. A swear engine he certainly is - although matched in his cussatorial enthusiasm by the entire rest of the cast, McShane bullies, and cajoles, and wisecracks his way through the series with the experienced occular twinkle of a life-long loveable rogue, every appearance on the screen an utter joy to behold.

McShane is perfectly cast - but is aided and abetted by a terrific supporting cast and a sublime script. Sublime, that is, if you don't mind the dictionary definition of "a stupid or unpleasant person" sprayed around. If repeated reference to ladies' nether regions, rendered agriculturally, isn't your bag, then nor is this show, by the way. But the blue language is matched by the inventively archaic dialogue which is simply wondrous, particularly in McShane's capable hands. One tip: the dialogue is rendered quickly at times and, as a single word is not to be missed, I found it useful to have the subtitles permanently on!

Elsewhere the characterisation is beautifully played, with a succession of great double acts: Robin Seigert's Jane to Dayton Callie's Charlie Utter; William Sanderson's EB Farnum to Molly Parker's Alma Garrett, but mostly the fulcrum around which all relationships, dramatic impulse and sypathy revolves is the marvellous Al Swearengen.

The production values are top notch, and if there were a weakness, it would be Timothy Olyphant's somewhat effete Seth Bullock: attempting the strong silent treatment, but not really pulling it off: A hard job, in any case, when everyone's rooting for Al.

Olly Buxton

The whole cast is good, is stunningly realized, but McShane drives this series. Bloody brilliant!

This is a very interesting story. It is probably a far more accurate depiction of the west than the standard "westerns" I have seen since I was a child. The dialogue is generally very rich and intelligent. The one drawback is the vulgarity. I am not opposed to any amount of vulgarity if it seems to fit the story. For example I really like The Sopranos where the vulgarity is obviously necessary to the reality of the show and the "family". In Deadwood, while it may be historically accurate, I actually find it distracting and overbearing. It is hard to believe that anyone would use the F word that much, particularly when many of the characters who use it are so otherwise articulate. Finally, the entertainment value of Deadwood probably suffers somewhat due to the bleakness and meanness of the people's existance. Everything is dark, the streets are mud and dung, and very few happy or uplifting things occur. That is probably the way it was, but don't expect to feel "cheered up" by this story.