Kings is premiering this weekend on NBC and I’m pretty excited. My hopes are high, mostly because the new show is starring Ian McShane, the great British actor. Before winding up on Kings, McShane could be seen prowling the thoroughfare of Deadwood on HBO, one of my all time favorite shows.
Deadwood featured an amazing cast, some of the best writing ever to appear on television, and impeccable aesthetics. Sure, it also featured gratuitous swearing, violence, and a countless number of prostitutes, but that shouldn’t scare you away. If you can get past the naughty words, and I know some folks who can’t, you are in for a treat. If you’ve been keeping up, I’ve been watching The Wire, another great HBO show, but I think if I had to recommend one to a friend, it would be Deadwood.
For my money, Deadwood is as close as you can come to Shakespeare outside of the bard himself. Now, that may sound crazy to the uninitiated, but fellow Deadwood lovers will be with me. The show featured thick, stylized language; this was not a show that you could watch while playing solitaire on your laptop. Deadwood often utilized monologues, a typical Shakespearean technique. Also, there was a good deal of humor mixed in with the political intrigue, gunslinging, and heavy drama of the show. Certain characters were definitely played as “clowns” or “fools”; I’m thinking of E.B. Farnum, Con Stapleton, and even Wu.
The real beauty of Deadwood, however, lay in the characters, and Al Swearengen in particular. I think Swearengen is the most complex character ever on television. A lofty claim, I know, but I’ll stand by it. He was the heart and soul of the series, and that’s saying quite a bit, as this show had amazing characters. I particularly loved the foils that the show set up for Swearengen. There was Seth Bullock, the highly moral (except when it came to his love life) sheriff, who sparred with Swearengen on a number of occasions. There was also Cy Tolliver, the rival bar/brothel owner who appeared to be a sophisticated gentleman on the outside, but was barely human on the inside, almost the exact opposite of Swearengen. Finally, there was George Hearst near the end of the series, a ruthless and cunning businessman who was almost an idiot savant, nearly incapable of making genuine human connection.
The other great part of Deadwood was the history involved. The show took place in the frontier camp of Deadwood, in the Dakota territory. The camp formed inside of Native American territory when gold was discovered in the area. In a short time, the area was flooded with prospectors. Historically speaking, Deadwood was full of mostly men. The vast majority of the few women in camp were prostitutes. This set the scene for a very interesting setting: a town with no laws, and a lot of gold. As you can imagine, hilarity ensued.
Many of the characters in Deadwood were based on actual historical figures. From the famous, like Calamity Jane and Wild Bill Hickok, to the lesser known people, like Sol Star and Seth Bullock, there was a lot of reality in this fictitious series.
The real shame in all of this was that HBO canceled the show because of it’s extremely high production costs. One look at the elaborate sets and costumes, and you can understand. It was a terrible injustice, however. David Milch, the creator, agreed to make a series of movies to finish up the series, but they never happened, and most likely never will at this point. That’s not a reason not to watch, however. Go pick up this great series on DVD.
Clacked by Bob Degon
on Mar 11, 2009 @ 15:00 EST5EDT
I will never forgive HBO for the way they treated Deadwood and its fans. If they would have at least followed through with the movies I could have forgiven them but now its too late. They need to feed those HBO execs to the pigs! Al Swearingen is one of the best characters on tv ever.
Oh, I agree. I really miss the elevated way in which everyone spoke in Deadwood. Even the swearing was lovely in it’s own way.
We were robbed of the rest of their stories.
Bob – thanks for the reminder about Kings. I have to see McShane.
If you’re a big Ian McShane fan like I am you HAVE to check him out in the Lovejoy TV series that he did back in 1986-1994.
From the Wikipedia entry:
“Lovejoy is a TV series about the adventures of Lovejoy, a British antiques dealer based in East Anglia whose scruples are not always the highest. These were based on a series of picaresque novels by John Grant (under the pen name Jonathan Gash). Lovejoy has a reputation in the antiques trade as a “divvie” (possibly derived from “diviner” although several of the books question this), meaning one with an almost supernatural talent for recognising exceptional items as well as for distinguishing fakes or forgeries from genuine antiques. Intriguingly, Lovejoy’s first name is never mentioned in the books. In the TV series based on the novels, he insists on being addressed by all solely as “Lovejoy”
It’s a delightful series and McShane is sexy, clever and very entertaining.
Thanks. I’ll see if I can find it!