Deadwood is another HBO series based on the real events and real people. This time, the period is the end of the 19th century and location is camp at first, later town of Deadwood in South Dakota. This is a real town, and was one of the many in the period settled by prospectors having gold claims in the the region. Story of Deadwood series spans over 3 seasons and tells the story of events from 1876 and 1877.

Cast and characters

There are too many characters. And because of that first half of the season was complicated to follow. But once we get the view into more important characters, things got better toward the end of first season. Most of the characters are based on real people and real events from the period. Seth Bullock is a famous lawman of the period, and overall great character played by Timothy Olyphant. Some parts of his life are changed to better serve the story, and the same goes for most of the characters based on the real persons. Overall, cast performances are very good and even excellent even that many of the character lacked the real depth and had very little of the back stories. Some of the characters were just over the top for my taste, like the Calamity Jane played by Robin Weigert. She did a great job, but the Jane was written that way, and from what I have seen that’s very different from actual Jane.

Writing

Deadwood

There are several concepts that series is build around and that includes lack of law in Deadwood and the ways things worked. Deadwood was a camp, that at one point needed to be recognized as a proper town involving politics and that was also corrupted and twisted with self interests, bribes and killings. In my opinion they managed to show the real face of the West in that time, but again, first half of the season was confusing and without real focus. But, last 4–5 episodes really caught my attention.

Production

Series is done great, and that’s exactly what you expect from HBO. They really know how to make period series. Deadwood is very detailed, dirty and it looks really realistic and gives you the sense of how the Wild West looked like. I didn’t liked the music, because reminded me too much of the music written for Rome and Carnivale  that I already watched.

Conclusion

This is only the first season, and I am watching second one, and it’s definitively improving. So, I recommend that you try it, knowing that series will change and be better.