Thirteen years after it was abruptly cancelled, David Milch’s grimy, glorious western finally gets the ending it deserves. Take note, Game of Thrones!
The moral panic caused by the Game of Thrones finale was a reminder that your biggest fan can turn Rupert Pupkin if they think you didn’t quite nail the landing. Whatever misgivings you may have had about The Iron Throne, at least the show delivered a grandstand finish. The 2006 finale of HBO’s Deadwood can barely be called that. A show abruptly cancelled after its third season was completed, its swansong fell flat with character arcs terminated in mid flight and a whole world of possibilities unexplored. Set in the historic lawless mining camp in the Black Hills gold rush of the 1870s, Deadwood melded profanity and poetry like no TV show before, reimagining the historic figures of the town in a bloody, grimy revisionist western that felt resolutely arthouse from its first shot to its last. It deserved better and now Deadwood: The Movie is a bold attempt to right that wrong, 13 years after its cancellation.
It does the trick. While it isn’t quite Deadwood at its jaw-dropping best – few things in TV history are – there is enough of the old magic left to deliver a satisfying ending. We find Deadwood well on its way to gentrification, a far cry from the rough-as-guts encampment that greeted us in 2004, caked in shit and blood. Trains not wagons now deliver newcomers, the thoroughfare looks more like a street, less like a pigpen, and there’s even a public phone. We are 10 years down the line from the final action of the TV show, with the town coming together to celebrate South Dakota becoming the 40th state of the Union. Philosopher king Al Swearengen is in still in situ at The Gem, perma-angry marshall Seth Bullock still inhales and expels pure righteousness and malevolent robber baronGeorge Hearst is back in town.
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