Too much of the final season’s precious screen time was given over to Brian Cox and his caravan of creaky thespians
When it debuted in 2004, David Milch’s 1870s-set gold rush drama combined brutal violence with goddamn gutter poetry. Even now, to suggest this wildest of westerns is anything less than a masterpiece is to risk being lynched by its posse of admirers. Loyalty – a fluid commodity among the town’s dirtbags and desperadoes – has remained a constant among fans.
Perhaps that devotion lingers because they remember the sting of betrayal. Deadwood was cancelled by
HBO in murky circumstances just before its third season aired in 2006. That corporate bushwhacking robbed Milch of the opportunity to craft any proper closure. Even if the rivalry of combustible lawman Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) and sulphurous saloon kingpin Al Swearengen (Ian McShane) had been resolved – or at least put on hold in the common interest of the camp – the abrupt ending still left a bushel of plot threads dangling. The Deadwood project, never far from the mud but always mythic in its scope, thus finished on a sombre downswing.