The Top 50 TV Shows of All-time: #9
#9- "DEADWOOD" HBO 2004-2006--------------------------------------
Nobody's really making new towns anymore. Human civilization has spanned out across the globe, and although many people are still nomadic, they pretty much choose to move individually or in small families from one established town to another. So it's instructive to watch a brilliant writer's conception of how a community actually comes into existence, how chaos is displaced by structure, and eventually, bureaucracy. The David Milch-created series was originally set to take place earlier in time in Rome, but Deadwood, South Dakota, circa 1876, was as good a place as any for a show of these themes because the discovery of gold in the nearby Black Hills and the huge migration that resulted immediately after caused the community to begin development at such a furious pace. "Deadwood" is not really a Western in the sense that we've come to know the genre. After about five episodes, you hardly ever see anybody riding a horse. It's a show instead about Main Street. It's a show about who holds the power in a community, how it's wielded through violence or the threat of violence, and how it's corrupted. It's about language, and how our social hierarchy is governed by it. And because it's about the exploitation of capitalism, yet also about how the necessity of order in a lawless culture is instituted by its most entrepreneurial entities, it is simultaneously the most socialistic and existentially-conservative TV show in history.
It's also about one of television's most dangerous thugs, as portrayed by Ian McShane. "Al Swearengen" connived to build and protect a fortune, slit throats as if his human victims were hogs, and was prone to delivering Shakespearean soliloquies while receiving blowjobs. Here, McShane talks with Charlie Rose about the show and his character.
posted by CM @ 9:00 PM
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