HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, which returns for a third season in September, echoes Milch’s Western, too its lavishly re-created twenties-boardwalk set feels like a cleaned-up version of Deadwood’s title encampment. No wonder we keep prospecting in cable’s shallows, panning for Milchian gold.Īmid the silt and pyrite, you’ll find FX’s Justified and Sons of Anarchy, 21st-century crime sagas that lean on western tropes and employ ex- Deadwood actors. The show was dark and violent, but with a core of tenderness and optimism. Dickensian thugs, hustlers, dreamers, and reprobates swarmed a mining camp’s muddy thoroughfares in search of sex, inebriates, profit, and vengeance, while Ian McShane’s saloon keeper Al Swearengen proffered foulmouthed color commentary. Why wouldn’t they? The HBO western built a hermetically sealed world that felt like Sam Peckinpah’s Our Town. The show’s cancellation in 2006 left a hole in fans’ hearts, and a glance at some of the most prominent current dramas suggests that TV’s showrunners miss it, too.
Much of modern TV is said to take place in a post- Sopranos universe, but this summer David Milch’s gold-rush western Deadwood seems just as influential. (Boss) ? BBC AMERICA/Cineflix (Copper) Inc.
Photo: Courtesy of Chris Large/AMC (Hell On Wheels) ?MMXI Lions Gate Television Inc.
