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Deadwood Second Season: The Greatest Spectacle on American Television


A day before yesterday, I posted a series of five topics I was to write about in few days. Well I am starting with the sixth 'unlisted' topic. It's an important one and like many important topics which I often forget to write about, I forgot about it as well. I am truly sorry.

The topic in discussion here is 'Deadwood'. It was a western TV series produced by HBO for 3 seasons starting in 2004. It's often is clubbed as the greatest TV series of all time with 'The Sopranos' and 'The Wire', coincidentally it's brethren on HBO. It was cancelled too soon by it's producers because production cost shot up too much and great recession of 2008 was already in motion and since then, and it is now 10 years, the fans of this show are begging HBO to bring it back.

So why was 'Deadwood' so famous? Just like 'The Wire', not many people watched it (but they were certainly more than the nos Wire fetched). There
were three main reasons:

1. It's historical background which was fictionalized magnificently by it's creator David Milch. Deadwood, you see, is a town in South Dakota which in 1870 was a town of salons, liquor, gold and lawlessness. No one living there wanted it to be annexed to Dakota Territory and at large, with USA despite running the risk of getting shot at any trivial issue at any given moment. The great popular figures of that time: Al Swearengen, Wild Bill Hicock, E.B. Farnum, Calamity Jane, George Hearst, Seth Bullock, Sol Star, Wyatt Earp and many more feature in it and they all are glorious in it.

2. The use of profane language which is poetic and so good and irresistible that you wouldn't even know that you were getting abused by one of it's characters if you were to listen to him. Try Al Swearengen!!!

3. The hypnotic performance of Ian McShane as Al Swearengen and for many, it's the only reason for their getting hooked to this TV series. He is a magnificent bastard who possesses the charm of a magician but one who doesn't hesitate for a moment in killing someone in gruesome manner. I believe if Deadwood would have been on a 70 mm screen rather than on a small TV, Ian could have won Oscars outright. He won Golden globe and Emmy instead.

Now my reason for writing this post is entirely different. You see, even a popular show languishes at some point of their run and at some time, they reach their peak. Now Breaking Bad was one such show of which third and fourth seasons were painfully slow but it's last and penultimate seasons were the best tv experience a viewer could have hoped for. Now imagine Deadwood's second season trumping even Breaking Bad's greatest seasons. It was 'that' spectacular.
So add it to your watchlist if you wanna delve into history of a great town and enjoy it's recklessness and most colorful (and tragic) characters!!!!!

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