"It ain't your granddaddy's Western."

Deadwood returns to HBO next month for its third season, and it's a personal mission of mine -- and chele74's, and call_me_daisy's (and now so_spiffed has answered the call to arms, hurrah!) -- to bring as many people as is possible into the fold of obsessed viewers, given the limits of freedom of speech and without resorting to physical coersion and arm-twisting.

Deadwood is, hands down, one of the BEST shows on television EVER. If you haven't given it a chance, you're missing out on something truly incredible. In fact, when nm973 asked me months ago what tv shows I thought should endure for all eternity, I think I named M*A*S*H, Battlestar Galactica, and Deadwood. It's superbly clever, darkly funny, beautiful and grotesque, it has so many memorable and vivid characters. And it's a show that has something to say -- about people, race, gender, vice and sin, the sacred and the profane, human weakness, order that emerges from Hobbesian chaos, the unbeatable forces that drive communities -- and about it's America, the politics and economics of how it came to be (and hence the modern world itself).

Do not let the Western-factor frighten you off. The fact that it's a period piece give Deadwood licence to swear like no show has sworn before, not to mention the costumes, the deliciously colourful and textured language that's like Guinness in your stomach...

Just LOOK at it:




~~~

A pair of well-written reviews from last season:

Deadwood, located in the black hills of the Dakota Territory somewhere between Casablanca and No Exit, is the anus of the Old West. Through these portals pass the primitive accumulators of capitalism's oral-anal stage — the evil-smelling and flesh-peddling flotsam of Manifest Destiny: Indian killers, claims jumpers, real-estate swindlers, road agents, opium addicts, and the saloon girls who love them anyway.
-- The New York Magazine

Even many devoted HBO fans declined to watch "Deadwood" in its first season because they do not like westerns. But "Deadwood" is a western the way "La Grande Illusion" was a war movie or "Vertigo" was a horror film.
-- The New York Times

On The House Next Door there's a terrific essay/interview on Deadwood and Robert Altman's classic pseudo-western, McCabe & Mrs Miller: McCabe and Mr. Milch

To some degree, nearly all of Altman's films are anatomies of community. Ditto “Deadwood," which week to week showcases a panoramic concentration that recalls Altman at the top of his game. Like Altman, Milch is not content to fixate on the plight of one individual -- a fundamental creative choice that puts both men temperamentally at odds with much of American popular culture. Both Altman and Milch prefer to see the big picture, the pointillist mural that takes shape when an artist asks the audience to take a few steps back from the canvas. They study human constellations comprised of distinct human beings who embrace different religions, inhabit different social strata, imbibe different substances, muse on their own pet obsessions and pursue their own strange agendas, all the while remaining largely oblivious to theirimpact on everyone else. Both Altman and Milch are not just storytellers. They are dramatic anthropologists, devising a collective organism in order to scrutinize it.

~~~

Links of interest:

- HBO Deadwood: official site
- Genius show writer/creater David Milch talks at MIT
- Salon interviews David Milch
- The Real Deadwood Podcast: interviews, news, music, photos.
- Deadwood Blog: maintained by the background actors on the show
- The Deadwood Stage: forums, spoilers, pictures
- King Straggler: folk, alt-Americana band of which John Hawkes (Sol Star) is a member (MySpace)


ETA: Speaking of Battlestar Galactica, so_spiffed has just posted a picspam of screencaps from season 1 of the show. Being Dae, of course, she doesn't just have her eye on people, but colour, composition, and lines. You already know the actors are gorgeous, now just take a moment to marvel at the artistry and craftsmanship of the crew -- the set decorators, artists, directors, cinematographers, light designers -- everybody that makes it all look so good.