Deadwood: The Wild West’s Shakespearean Masterpiece

But threaded through the spew of swear words were sudden flights of near-Shakespearean eloquence. Comforting a slighted henchman, Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), the town pimp and saloonkeeper, was soothing: “Whatever lurks ahead, whatever grievous abominations and discord, you and me walk into it together, like always.”

Fans of the Deadwood Television Series — and there were many from the start — fell in love with Swearengen, the murderous, devious and world-weary Old West mob boss. The show had a putative hero, Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant), a former marshal turned shopkeeper, but Swearengen was the real star, a complicated, beguiling antihero among the so-called difficult men of television’s second Golden Age.

Deadwood was lawless territory, which was interesting because series creator David Milch honed his skills on “Hill Street Blues” and “NYPD Blue,” contemporary cop shows that eventually all but killed the TV western. It seemed fitting that he would pay reparations by riffing on frontier lawlessness and disorder. In a 2004 interview, Milch stated that he wanted to explore the “primordial ooze” of law enforcement. In the Deadwood television series, the closest thing to justice was revenge with peer review.

I was even more smitten with Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert), the profane and drunken sidekick to Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine) — both historical figures reimagined by Milch for the Deadwood series. Jane dressed, drank, cursed and fought like a man, but when she looked at Wild Bill, her face softened with a spinsterish yearning that was heartbreaking. Then someone else would speak up and she would snap back to her usual snarling, bullying self.