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List Price: $59.98 | | Label: Home Box Office (HBO)
Salesrank: 1254
Released: February 8, 2005 |
| Our Price: $29.99 |
| Used Price: $21.00 |
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MPAA Rating:
Media: DVD |
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Editorial Review:
(HBO Dramatic Series) 1876. In the Black Hills of South Dakota lies Deadwood, a lawless town inhabited by a mob of restless misfits ranging from an ex-lawman to a scheming saloon owner to the legendary Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. The richest gold strike in American history provides the backdrop for HBO's next great drama.
DVD Features:
Audio Commentary
Featurette
Other
Description of Deadwood - The Complete First Season:
The remarkable first season of Deadwood represents one of those periodic, wholesale reinventions of the Western that is as different from, say, Lonesome Dove as that miniseries is from Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo or the latter is from Anthony Mann's The Naked Spur. In many ways, HBO's Deadwood embraces the Western's unambiguous morality during the cinema's silent era through the 1930s while also blazing trails through a post-NYPD Blue, post-The West Wing television age exalting dense and customized dialogue. On top of that, Deadwood has managed an original look and texture for a familiar genre: gritty, chaotic, and surging with both dark and hopeful energy. Yet the show's creator, erstwhile NYPD Blue head writer David Milch, never ridicules or condescends to his more grasping, futile characters or overstates the virtues of his heroic ones.
Set in an ungoverned stretch of South Dakota soon after the 1876 Custer massacre, Deadwood concerns a lawless, evolving town attracting fortune-seekers, drifters, tyrants, and burned-out adventurers searching for a card game and a place to die. Others, particularly women trapped in prostitution, sundry do-gooders, and hangers-on have nowhere else to go. Into this pool of aspiration and nightmare arrive former Montana lawman Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) and his friend Sol Starr (John Hawkes), determined to open a lucrative hardware business. Over time, their paths cross with a weary but still formidable Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine) and his doting companion, the coarse angel Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert); an aristocratic, drug-addicted widow (Molly Parker) trying to salvage a gold mining claim; and a despondent hooker (Paula Malcomson) who cares, briefly, for an orphaned girl. Casting a giant shadow over all is a blood-soaked king, Gem Saloon owner Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), possibly the best, most complex, and mesmerizing villain seen on TV in years. Over 12 episodes, each of these characters, and many others, will forge alliances and feuds, cope with disasters (such as smallpox), and move--almost invisibly but inexorably--toward some semblance of order and common cause. Making it all worthwhile is Milch's masterful dialogue--often profane, sometimes courtly and civilized, never perfunctory--and the brilliant acting of the aforementioned performers plus Brad Dourif, Leon Rippy, Powers Boothe, and Kim Dickens. --Tom Keogh
Deadwood - The Complete First Season Reviews:
The best tv western of them all? 
2009-12-10 - A completely separate beast from all other tv westerns, Deadwood sparkles with superior writing, direction, and performances, especially Ian McShane's beguilingly nasty turn as Jim Swearengen.
I watched a bit of this on HBO in 2004 then decided to wait to see it all at once on dvd. Glad I did, for the whole series plays out as well as The Sopranos. Compulsively watchable, a mixed delight of humor and horror, Deadwood is yet another bar-raising series from HBO, whose shows are so far ahead of normal tv that it seems something of a joke.
I love old westerns, and this takes all the tropes and ratchets them up a notch or three. The language seems at last to be, after so many sanitized westerns, what you would have really heard back then. It's all so believable and yet so well-paced and crisply penned that there's nothing left to ask for: you just sit back and marvel.
If you like westerns at all, or just excellent writing and fine dramatic craft, this is one not to be missed.
And hey, casting agents of Hollywood: McShane is one of the very best character players alive. What are you doing throwing him bit parts in stuff like Death Race? He should be leading man in any number of big budget movies. The guy has the goods. Let him show the world what deep acting is all about.
Deadwood- the complete first season
2009-12-07 - If you could get by the constant "cussin", it was a great series. Watched all three seasons and now have them all too. To me the standout in season one is Keith Carradine as "Wild Bill Hickok", I think a series could have been made of just his adventures his portrayal was so good!
As with many really good series like this one, it made me and my wife want to find out and research about the real characters. Good writing, acting, just a real good show!
NOT for kids, but well worth watching!
Deadwood is amazing - HBO did it again!
2009-12-01 - Once again, HBO has created an amazing world and has drawn us inside. They did their homework and wove together a tantalizing mix of history and fiction, and created a cast of characters we just can't stop watching. The dalogue is an engaging blend of rough mining town profanity and almost Shakespearean prose. Deadwood is realistic and harsh, and completely mesmerizing. Highly recommended for adult viewing. Can't wait to start season 2!
Husband loved it!!! 
2009-11-03 - I ordered this for my husband. He had seen previews on it on television but never had the time to watch the episodes. So I purchased Season 1 for him to view at his convenience. He loved it. He couldn't stop watching. He enjoyed the characters, they were real interesting, kept him curious as to what was going to happen next. He also enjoyed the wild west scenes and the animals in the movie.
Mind Daggering
2009-09-12 - A tremendous cast and ever so creative for a western. As realistic as one could imagine. Too bad production could not continue for another couple of seasons!
B.H. of Virginia
