Product Description

(HBO Dramatic Series) 1876. In the Black Hills of South Dakota lies Deadwood, a lawless town inhabited by a mob of restless misfits ranging from an ex-lawman to a scheming saloon owner to the legendary Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. The richest gold strike in American history provides the backdrop for HBO's next great drama.


Format: DVD MOVIE

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1588 in DVD
• Brand: WARNER HOME VIDEO
• Released on: 2005-02-08
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: AC-3, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 6
• Dimensions: 1.40 pounds
• Running time: 720 minutes

Amazon.com
The remarkable first season of Deadwood represents one of those periodic, wholesale reinventions of the Western that is as different from, say, Lonesome Dove as that miniseries is from Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo or the latter is from Anthony Mann's The Naked Spur. In many ways, HBO's Deadwood embraces the Western's unambiguous morality during the cinema's silent era through the 1930s while also blazing trails through a post-NYPD Blue, post-The West Wing television age exalting dense and customized dialogue. On top of that, Deadwood has managed an original look and texture for a familiar genre: gritty, chaotic, and surging with both dark and hopeful energy. Yet the show's creator, erstwhile NYPD Blue head writer David Milch, never ridicules or condescends to his more grasping, futile characters or overstates the virtues of his heroic ones.

Set in an ungoverned stretch of South Dakota soon after the 1876 Custer massacre, Deadwood concerns a lawless, evolving town attracting fortune-seekers, drifters, tyrants, and burned-out adventurers searching for a card game and a place to die. Others, particularly women trapped in prostitution, sundry do-gooders, and hangers-on have nowhere else to go. Into this pool of aspiration and nightmare arrive former Montana lawman Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) and his friend Sol Starr (John Hawkes), determined to open a lucrative hardware business. Over time, their paths cross with a weary but still formidable Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine) and his doting companion, the coarse angel Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert); an aristocratic, drug-addicted widow (Molly Parker) trying to salvage a gold mining claim; and a despondent hooker (Paula Malcomson) who cares, briefly, for an orphaned girl. Casting a giant shadow over all is a blood-soaked king, Gem Saloon owner Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), possibly the best, most complex, and mesmerizing villain seen on TV in years. Over 12 episodes, each of these characters, and many others, will forge alliances and feuds, cope with disasters (such as smallpox), and move--almost invisibly but inexorably--toward some semblance of order and common cause. Making it all worthwhile is Milch's masterful dialogue--often profane, sometimes courtly and civilized, never perfunctory--and the brilliant acting of the aforementioned performers plus Brad Dourif, Leon Rippy, Powers Boothe, and Kim Dickens. --Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

Worst F***ing Dialogue I've Ever F***ing Heard
Ok, judging by the title for this review, you can guess what my main problem with Deadwood is. I rented the first disc of Deadwood season 1 because I love the old west theme and I've liked HBO's other productions, so I really wanted to check this out.

Unfortunately, within the first 5 minutes of episode 1, I quickly started noticing a theme with the dialogue that did not let up one bit throughout the 2 episodes on this disc, and that was the profanity. Lots and LOTS of it. I'm no goodie-two-shoes and don't have the cleanest mouth in the world, so profanity in itself doesn't bother me, but when it is SOOOOOOOO over the top that it's a distraction from what is really supposed to be going on, then that's a problem. There were occaisions where characters in this show were able to squeeze in 2, 3 or 4 F-bombs into a SINGLE sentence. No kidding.

They could have used some profanity and gotten the point across, but it was WAY overdone. It wasn't realistic, it was just plain stupid.

It seems like people who are writing scripts for some of these movies and t.v. shows think that if they splash enough profanity around that they can call it "authentic". Doesn't work, people. There had better also be some substance, and I just didn't find it in the first two episodes of Deadwood.

Even if you fixed the dialogue, I found the characters to be boring, as well as the storyline. I really WANTED to like Deadwood, but I just didn't.

dead wood
i loved this i used the first season from a guy at worked i enjoyed it so much i bought all 3 seasons the only reason i did not give it all 5 stars is it was going to run 4 seasons so i did not like the way it ended at the end of the 3rd season it left you hanging but it was still a good show

Dead Wood 1st season
This is a good Western story.But it has a whole lot of swearing & some nudity. Do not buy this if you get offended by hearing the F word every two to five minutes.