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Mixed:
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Negative:
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Critic Reviews
Oct 4, 2013
Season 2 Review:
When you care about everyone in a town like Deadwood, every hot argument, every passionate embrace, every sudden murder is liable to delight, disgust or surprise. Once a week, Deadwood is a phenomenal place to visit - but I wouldn't want to live there. [4 Mar 2005, p.127]
Oct 4, 2013
Season 2 Review:
Magnificently profane and entirely engaging, Deadwood remains one of TV's best character-driven dramas. [4 Mar 2005, p.W-45]
Oct 4, 2013
Season 2 Review:
But this much is true: Deadwood is cocksure brilliant. David Milch, who put the glory into "NYPD Blue," is clearly and defiantly uninterested in political correctness. He just wants to make a great Western for TV. In that, he's succeeded. [4 Mar 2005, p.E1]
Oct 4, 2013
Season 2 Review:
Not for the squeamish, the second season debut of this raw, unrefined Western takes about 10 minutes to get wound up and then it zips along with the first signs of civilization -- outside government and the telegraph -- threatening to invade. If the language doesn't make you wince, the stinking mud of the vice-filled mining boomtown will practically make your eyes water. What creator David Milch is saying about the foundation of U.S. expansion west isn't always easy to take, but it's often poetic just the same. And the performances led by Ian McShane, Brad Dourif and Timothy Olyphant are something to behold. [4 Mar 2005, p.57]
Oct 4, 2013
Season 2 Review:
It's a shame that the coarse language used on Deadwood may put some viewers off the HBO show, which, as it happens, is television's most thoughtful exploration of morality. This richly textured, extraordinarily acted show... is a classic in the making, compelling even to those who might not necessarily be fans of the western genre. [4 Mar 2005, p.C1]
Oct 4, 2013
Season 2 Review:
What is most riveting about Deadwood is the way it blows the dust off the Western to tell a contemporary story. [5 Mar 2005, p.14E]
Oct 4, 2013
Season 2 Review:
Deadwood may not offer the vision of the Old West Americans have had for years, but it is a stunning, intelligent, almost poetic view of how we came to be a nation. [5 Mar 2005, p.1E]
Oct 4, 2013
Season 2 Review:
The greatest dramatic series in the history of American television. [6 Mar 2005, p.1]
Oct 3, 2013
Season 1 Review:
HBO just might have found its next great dramatic addiction --- a vulgar, gritty, at times downright nasty take on the Old West brimming with all the dark genius that series creator and screenwriter extraordinaire David Milch has at his fingertips. [19 Mar 2004, p.2]
Oct 3, 2013
Season 1 Review:
It also showcases Milch's taste for complexity when it comes to both the criminal mind and the lawman's motivations. [19 Mar 2004, p.D1]
Oct 3, 2013
Season 1 Review:
The sheer amount of cussing is so great that even the unoffended may be too distracted by it to pay attention to anything else in Deadwood. That would be unfortunate, because lurking just behind the wall of profanity is a magnificent, fire-breathing work of art - an amazing meditation on violence, social order and the cruel reality of the Wild West. [21 Mar 2004, p.1]
Sep 30, 2013
Season 1 Review:
A fascinating and disturbing vision. [21 Mar 2004, p.F5]
Sep 30, 2013
Season 1 Review:
The unheralded Olyphant is the star, and he's excellent. [21 Mar 2004, p.8]
Oct 4, 2013
Season 2 Review:
Deadwood will never be everyone's cup of tea, but it stands as one of HBO's most fully realized dramas since "The Sopranos" and exhibits no signs of fading in the second leg of its run. [3 Mar 2005, p.4]
Oct 4, 2013
Season 2 Review:
As much as any other Western town in any other Western, Deadwood -- which is really a camp hoping to be a town hoping to be part of the United States -- seems really to exist, so vivid are the characters and so rich the texture. [5 Mar 2005, p.C01]
Oct 3, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Deadwood is engrossing, refreshingly well written and oddly relevant. [15 Mar 2004, p.E1]
Oct 3, 2013
Season 1 Review:
In the same way that "The Wire" showed there is an HBO way to update that staple of regular TV, the cop show, Deadwood demonstrates that the western can be revitalized, too, with a dose of extreme realism. [19 Mar 2004, p.C1]
Oct 3, 2013
Season 1 Review:
It's a grim, evocative look at some of this country's ruggedest but most disreputable roots -- a meticulously detailed portrait of a time, place and people that makes even today, with its punishing headlines about suicide bombs and other terrorist atrocities, seem almost safe and sane.
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Sep 30, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Engrossing - and gross. [21 Mar 2004, p.4M]
Sep 30, 2013
Season 1 Review:
It's a first-rate drama, as well, like no other Western on TV before it. It's Dodge City turned inside out, dense with intriguing, complicated characters seeking their fortune in the baddest gold-mining camp of them all. [21 Mar 2004, p.1E]
Oct 4, 2013
Season 2 Review:
It's all kind of pleasingly thematic, alternately gritty and funny and caked with moral decay. Milch loves the wordplay; the show's language is one of its constant sources of pleasure. Not everyone's drunk in "Deadwood," but the liquor flows freely, lubricating the mood; the way the show is lighted, it always seems like late afternoon, and the set is a dingy, muddy Main Street with little side neighborhoods that function as slums. [6 Mar 2005, p.E28]
Oct 3, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Deadwood is not easy to watch. There is no musical score; the settings are relentlessly dull and depressing; and it is shot almost entirely in shades of sepia and gray. The series takes its own time establishing the characters, and the dialogue is muffled and indistinct. But once the story takes hold, it is hard to turn away. Like laudanum, a good western can be habit-forming.
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Sep 30, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Tenderfoot, when you mosey into Deadwood, HBO's latest breathtaking drama series, you should remember: An entirely new world takes a little getting used to. [21 Mar 2004, p.H01]
Sep 30, 2013
Season 1 Review:
It's a true character piece with top-notch acting all around. [21 Mar 2004, p.TV-5]
Sep 30, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Deadwood is the equivalent of Roy's Trigger returning as an ill-tempered, bucking bronco that's dead-set against galloping off into the sunset. Saddle up anyway. This is going to be one helluva ride - to points unknown. [21 Mar 2004, p.3]
Season 3 Review:
The third season, as much as the two preceding ones, continues to breathe new life and vigor into the Western genre. What's more, the actors have become so comfortable in the skins of their characters, we can now appreciate the complexity of their personalities and desires.
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Oct 4, 2013
Season 2 Review:
The second season of HBO's Deadwood gets off to such a sluggish start that fans can be forgiven if -- like saloon boss Al Swearengen -- they worry that change is coming all too fast to the raw, lawless Western town. [6 Mar 2005, p.F03]
Oct 3, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Get past the language, though, and Deadwood slowly but surely draws you in. Keith Carradine, as Hickok, brings quiet stoicism and strength to a new level; Timothy Olyphant as Seth Bullock, who has hung up his lawman's badge to hang a hardware-store shingle in town, isn't far behind. [18 Mar 2004, p.101]
Oct 3, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Despite an excellent cast, Milch's knockout writing and McShane's hypnotically toxic villain, Deadwood conjures up one very brutal wild west purgatory punctuated by misery, anger, lust, greed, violent death and all those outrageously naughty words. Happy trails. [19 Mar 2004, p.4E]
Sep 30, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Technically, Deadwood is marred occasionally by sloppy continuity. One gaffe occurs after Bullock and Hickok discover the slain pioneer family at night. As they ride back to town with the sole survivor of the crime, darkness suddenly gives way to bright daylight as the rescue party makes a turn in a road. In another scene, Bullock is shown shaving his neck and the sides of his baby face, only to be seen with stubble five minutes later. [21 Mar 2004, p.TV-6]
Sep 30, 2013
Season 1 Review:
What Deadwood becomes within its first four episodes is a complex, neo-Shakespearean take on social and institutional corruption, racism, environmental barbarism, and the nature of good and evil. It not only provides a different view of how the West was won but also muses on how the taming of the frontier mirrors modern times. [21 Mar 2004, p.3E]
Oct 3, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Perhaps this is the way people really spoke in 1876 Deadwood, but TV isn't a research paper, and shows don't run with footnotes and annotations. Many viewers are likely to feel that Milch and the actors have failed to make the expletive-laden dialogue play as believable. Equally many are likely to find it off-putting, whether they believe it or not. It's just one more barrier for a genre that already has a problem connecting with a modern audience...That hurdle might have been overcome had the actors been able to pull us past the words and into the story, but Milch has not cast the show as well as he needed. With the exception of the always welcome Keith Carradine, whose dissipated Wild Bill Hickok is the series' most appealing character, the actors are not up to the tasks assigned.
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Oct 3, 2013
Season 1 Review:
It's really all about shock - not that there's many places to go after you feed not one, but two corpses to animals...When that wears thin, you can always count on an insane amount of four letter words, which are used with the discretion of a 12-year-old boy who's just discovered them. Five "f" words in one sentence just sounds idiotic.
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Oct 3, 2013
Season 1 Review:
But these components don't detract from Deadwood as much as the series' inability to get the story rolling, although it shows potential for growing more interesting two or three episodes from now. Look at the introduction as an overly long handshake with a huge cast of characters, then take notice of how tedious such an elaborate setup can be, even one punctuated by thundercracks of violence. [19 Mar 2004, p.D1]
Sep 30, 2013
Season 1 Review:
The bonanza of off-color dialogue makes Deadwood a hard sell: Who knew the Wild Wild West could be such a joyless place? [21 Mar 2004, p.4]
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