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List Price: $59.98 | | Label: Home Box Office (HBO)
Salesrank: 2826
Released: February 8, 2005 |
| Our Price: $32.00 |
| Used Price: $27.41 |
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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:
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
Ignore the Nay-sayers
2009-08-18 - Simply one of the best series on TV, ever. Not just within the Western genre. Ignore the nay-sayers who can't get past the language. Yes, the language is exceedingly crude, rough, profane, dirty, nasty, repulsive... whatever adjective you want to use. The solution for folks who are put off by the language is an easy one: don't watch the show. But don't watch the show a few times, decide you are offended by the profanity, and then decide that by that criterion alone Deadwood deserves a single star. Go watch your PG- or G-rated series or some mind-numbing reality show if you're looking for clean language (but, of course, there's no guarantee of finding clean language in other TV shows, especially so-called 'reality shows', which simply 'bleep' out the offensive words). Cursing is part of the human condition. Is it "over the top" in Deadwood, i.e., simply so excessive that it detracts from enjoying this amazing production? That, of course, if up to individual taste and discretion.
This series is characterized by absolutely top-notch writing, acting, cinematography and set design. The plots -- as complex and veering as they can be -- unfold and inter-twine over the course of weeks (like real life) and offer a compulsively watchable, quasi-operatic story line. Like a series of interwoven morality plays, supported by fascinating arcs of character development. A mix of Cormac McCarthy (read Blood Meridian), Shakespeare and bar-room banter. What's most compelling to me is to see how some of the major (as well as certain seemingly lesser) characters develop over time, how they each in their own way struggle with maintaining some semblance of goodness and compassion in the midst of hellish conditions and unabated evil, violence and pestilence. Of course, some don't even pretend that they ever had a moral compass to begin with.
The entire cast is first-rate, with McShane and Olyphant standing out in their dominant roles. And don't miss Robin Weigert as Calamity Jane, Molly Parker as Alma Garrett or William Sanderson as E.B. Farnum. The ENTIRE cast is amazing. Powers Booth, Keith Carradine, Brad Dourif, Dayton Callie, Ray McKinnon, Dan Dority, Kim Dickens, Jeffrey Jones, Paula Malcomson, John Hawkes, etc. Just an incredibly talented cast at the peak of their skills, and a script equal to their acting talents. The final episode of Season 1 was nothing short of jaw-dropping. Watch Seth Bullock (Olyphant) -- always chafing at what he sees transpiring in Deadwood, always simmering with pent up rage -- finally reach his limit and cross a line that can't be uncrossed. Watch Swearengen (McShane)do what he does best (end lives) with cold calculation and not a scintilla of remorse. Paradoxically, we see Swearengen also -- in taking another life -- commit perhaps his first truly merciful act. Terrific stuff.
Is the language and violence a reasonably accurate depiction of social intercourse in the real-world Old West, in South Dakota in frontier days? That's for the historians to comment upon, I suppose. But that question misses the point of dramatic art. And make no mistake: Deadwood is Art. Kudos to HBO and Milch (sp?)...
Excellent TV Show
2009-08-14 - First off, I'd like to say that this show isn't for everyone. I'm not really very sensitive when it comes to swearing, but I think that this show often does it to the point of absurdity. However, after an episode or two, I learned to ignore that, and just enjoy the plot, and I must say I did! One thing that I think this show does very well is having "those guys" in the show. For almost every character in the show, I can think of a person that sort of fits that role. It makes the show much more relatable. They also have complex characters. Al Swearengen is a perfect example. At times, he can seem like a funny, hard, but nice character, and others, you'll be glad you live nowhere and nowhen near him. It's a great show, and I highly recommend it!!!
"Over the top" 
2009-08-12 - Amazing how people will accept things based on a label. The term in movies and TV "over the top" in reality means the writers and directors have no restraint or taste. Deadwood initially had me devided between loving the characters, plot, setting and hating the "over the top" use of constant swearing. Yup, I'll bet there was plenty of swearing back then but there was a balance of normal conversation and salty talk just like there is today. I sat in a breakroom with a co-worker recently who went on a tirade about something or another for no more than 5 minutes. I kept track of how many times he used the "F word" in those mere 5 minutes and it was 75 times. He also used the word "dude" about as many times but I couldn't keep track of both words. Too much work! It would be interesting to take a work of Mark Twain and fill it with F***ing C**ks***ers to the point of absurdity. His artful writing would be obscured with the attention drawn to childish profanity. I use the "F word" on occasion when the occasion warrents but I use it for the ultimate of expression. In other words I use it when circumstances themselves are "over the top". Its a GREAT form of expression when used when something has got you completely and absolutely rilled. Therefore, I RESERVE it for times I want to make a point when normal language doesn't suffice. And there's the problem with Deadwood, a Mark Twain should have written the script and been allowed to pepper in some salty dialogue for occasional EMPHASIS. Mark Twain spent some time in Silver City, Nevada and had real life experience with what the town of Deadwood was really like so too bad he's not around. I'd sure like to have Mark Twain write the script for Deadwood but it sounds more like it was written by my co-worker. Yo, yo, yo mother f***ing c***sucker the wild west was never so f***ing cool, dude! Could have been a great series had the writers and directors understood that the term "over the top" is in reality a derogotory one and the word "restraint" is a good one to follow.
