Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1879 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-08-06
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Formats: Box set, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 4
• Running time: 691 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
The final complete season of HBO's remarkable Deadwood series is full of surprises and devastating experiences as the nascent, dangerous town prepares to join Dakota territory in 1877. As in the previous two seasons, the question of who will control the town's resources, assets, and people drives much of the drama, affecting all manner of relationships and alliances, often between the most unlikely people. The dominant storyline in Deadwood Season 3 concerns upcoming elections for mayor and sheriff of the mucky, gold-mining town. The real juice, however, is not so much between the individuals running for office as between two power brokers each trying to steer the results toward their own purposes. Saloon owner and Deadwood's puppetmaster, Al Swearengen (Ian McShane sustaining his brilliant peformance in the previous two seasons), works closely with incumbent lawman Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) on retaining the latter's seat. But Bullock himself has difficulty surrendering his penchant for taking unambiguous action and relying on few words, especially when he has to act like a politician and deal with people such as George Hearst (Gerald McRaney, playing the real-life father of William Randolph Hearst).Swearengen's rival, Hearst--a self-made industrialist who gained his fortune through mining--has every intention of overtaking Deadwood, with his eye particularly on the lucrative mine owned by Bullock's former lover, Alma (Molly Parker). (The violence Hearst employs to get to Alma's claim will stun many Deadwood fans.)

Meanwhile, Bullock's old friend, Sol Starr (John Hawkes), runs for mayor against the feckless E.B. Farnum (William Sanderson), and tries to navigate through his difficult relationship with Trixie (Paula Malcomson) as she grows enraged by former lover Swearengen's manipulation of her and everyone else. Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert) is encouraged to become a public speaker, telling of her misadventures with General George Custer, and she commences a lesbian relationship with Joanie (Kim Dickens), the saloon owner who is becoming increasingly despondent and suicidal. Bullock's relationship with his wife, Martha (Anna Gunn) continues to deepen and become more of an influence on him, Wyatt Earp comes for a visit, and a newcomer to town, Jack Langrishe (Brian Cox), an old friend of Swearengen, attempts to open a theatre. As expected, the season finale concludes with the long-awaited election, but HBO's decision to bring Deadwood to an end required creator David Milch to wrap everything up in a pair of two-hour movies. Still, The Complete Third Season is very satisfying on every level, and will always be, along with the rest of the series, a television landmark. --Tom Keogh

Synopsis
HBO delivers another stunning, evocative drama in DEADWOOD. The channel has an impressive reputation when it comes to producing edge-of-your-seat television (THE SOPRANOS, SIX FEET UNDER), and DEADWOOD follows neatly in that tradition. Set in 1876, the story unfolds just two weeks after the defeat of Custer at Little Big Horn. The grim and unsentimental series revolves around the outlaws, miscreants, and murderers in the frontier gold-rush town of Deadwood in the Dakota Territory. Seth Bullock, a former Montana sheriff, and his buddy Sol Star arrive in town to set up a hardware store; soon, they're crossing paths with such legendary Western figures as Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. Reaping the benefits of the lawless, merciless world is Al Swearengen, the saloon and brothel owner. Presented here is the show’s third and final series.

Customer Reviews

Deadwood Comes to a Dead-end in Magnificent Style
1877 and mining magnate George Hearst has set up his stall in Deadwood. The flagrantly sociopathic Hearst intends to use his considerable wealth and power to monopolise the gold of the Black Hills and to make the Deadwood camp his own. Al Swearengen, Seth Bullock and Cy Tolliver do not however intend to capitulate to Mister Hearst without a fight and, together with their various peculiar confederates, this unlikely triumvirate are soon drawn into a vicious conflict with Hearst's operation. At the close of the first episode of this the third series of `Deadwood', Swearengen emerges fresh from a preliminary and fractious exchange with Hearst and tells the endearingly imbecilic Richardson to urge the Great God of Deer Antlers `to ready for blood'. By the time the series itself comes to an end, there is no doubt that Swearengen's prophecy was well made. Yet for all the bloodshed, the conclusion of the third series leaves payback unpaid, multiple loose ends untied, and begs a `to be continued'. Yet sadly `Deadwood' will almost certainly not be continued. Whilst for the last year HBO have continued to deny that they have ruled out completely the possibility of making a further series, they have allowed the contracts of the entire cast to lapse and according to a justfiably angry W. Earl Brown (Dan Dority), have now dismantled the Deadwood set.

HBO cited writer David Milch's leisurely writing pace and commitments to other projects as reasons for pulling the plug on the show. Whilst Milch did in any case intend to bring `Deadwood' to a natural conclusion in a projected fourth series, the third season contains little sign that Milch was running out of creative steam. The script is still as sharp as Dan Dority's knife. Cerebral, eccentric, jet black in its humour, and with a level of profanity which in both its nature and subject refuses to bow the knee to the anodyne tyranny of political correctness, the dialogue of each fifty minute episode yields more memorable and eminently quotable exchanges than most TV dramas could possibly produce in a thousand hours. Milch's magnificent characterisation continues to be brilliantly executed by the every member of the cast, most notably Ian McShane whose performances as Al Swearengen have undoubtedly made McShane the coolest sixty-four year old in the world and rendered the character of Swearengen a cultural icon.

My reason for giving the DVD release of series three of Deadwood only four stars is nothing to do with the quality of the series itself but is a comment on the unashamed exploitation by HBO of European markets. The Region 2 DVD box set is, in relative terms, not only considerably more expensive than the US Region 1 version, it is also without the two discs of supplementary material (or for that matter, any 'bonus' material at all) provided in the US release. The poor, cash strapped US subscription TV giant claim that they cannot afford to retain the cast and maintain the elaborate set of `Deadwood' whilst they wait for David Milch to get around to writing a final series. Profiteering of the manner which HBO have indulged in with this DVD release will ensure that this claim rings particularly hollow with UK and European audiences.

In an age where watching television has generally become a non-surgical method of full frontal lobotomy, `Deadwood' has set the gold-standard for TV dramas and one which is unlikely to be met for a good few years. As TV production companies on both sides of the Atlantic maintain `dramas' and `sitcoms' of appalling quality for season after miserable season, that `Deadwood' should come to a premature end seems nothing short of a crime against popular culture. In what must surely be an implicit acknowledgement that the intended fourth series will now never get beyond David Milch's preliminary notes, HBO and Milch have agreed in principle that a two hour TV movie should be made in order to bring `Deadwood' to a half-way dignified denouement. Unfortunately, in a recent press release, HBO have conceded that the chances of this movie ever actually being made are at best 50/50. `Deadwood' will undoubtedly and deservedly take a premier place in the limited pantheon of TV dramas possessed of genuine creative genius; lamentably it seems that it is destined to do so as an unfinished masterpiece.

DEADWOOD great - but not that great
As everyone knows seasons 1 & 2 were superb. Beautifully shot, fantastically cast and a dialogue that melts like poetry. Season 3 is a tricky one - everyone is on top form but it is all a bit broken up with each episode being given over to an individual characters storyline while alway skipping around a main storyline. Searies 3 has curtailed its graphic 'grousomeness' as everyone is becoming a little more likeable and civilised. It is well worth a watch - you will get to the end of the last disk and scramble around in the box trying to find another disk exclaiming - 'what - that cant be the end'.

And indeed it is not. According to IMDB HBO offered a half season to the creators of Deadwood which they said would not be enough. The outcome is that HBO have (apparently) commissioned 2 x 2hr films to wrap up the series (essentially Season 4 & 5) - and of course these will best be viewed on DVD rather than broadcast. So keep an eye out here.

Where's disc 5? (review contains *spoilers*)
Similar to the now legendary Spinal Tap volume control, I wished Amazon's rating system allowed me to go up to six to rate Deadwood, series 1 and 2. Within the constraints of 5 stars however, I have to rate series three as a lowly 4. Doesn't seem fair in the scheme of things because Deadwood stands so far above all other TV shows but there it is.

Series 3 (not 'season 3'...pet peeve of mine) sacrifices too many of the great things which made the first two series so good. Mr Wu is out of town, Cy Tolliver is confined to the Bella Union, Doc Cochrane is too ill to make his rounds, Farnum is out of the loop. New characters are brought in but go nowhere compared to series one and two; the Earp brothers, Aunt Lou and especially the seemingly pointless troupe of travelling actors are merely distracting interludes. There's even some weak acting in the form of the hotel keeper Shaughnessy (played by the same Dan Hildebrand who was so good as Tim Driscoll in series 1).

Eleven episodes are lavished at the expense of other sub plots and character development on building George Hearst into an almost unbelievably reprehensible megalomaniac with no redeeming traits, getting the viewer along with all of the cast to detest him, and want him dead. But then does not pay off. The sheer scale of the Hearst character completely skewes the previous plots and relationships in the camp: local politics (small 'p') and rivalries which held so much dramatic value in the first two series are rendered irrelevant in the new scheme of things. Hearst becomes the reference point for everything.

This is done brilliantly of course - the great direction and writing constantly ratchets up the suspense and threatening atmosphere through eleven episodes (relieved briefly by the adrenaline pumping fight between Dority and Turner) until it is utterly stifling. But then the hoped-for denouement is not delivered. With Seth and Al's crew pumped up, Hawkeye's men in the camp, Mr Wu's celestial army assembled and armed and all arrayed against the combined might of Hearst's muscle the series just fizzles out meekly. There's no blood bath, no showdown with the Pinkertons, there's no revenge or popular justice. Swearengen, Bullock and Alma Garret simply give in, the fledgeling and unlikely community of Deadwood cannot close ranks and overcome. Hearst wins and rides off into the sunset.

I'm sure I missed the point - Milch is way smarter than me and if I was disappointed by the way Deadwood ended then it's almost certainly because I didn't 'get it' on first viewing and need to watch it a few more times. Nevertheless I felt decidedly underwhelmed by the way the series closed and honestly thought there must be some mistake...was there a fifth disc somewhere in the box set with extras plus the final, perhaps cliched but satisfying climax? Almost without exception the dialogue, casting, characterisation, sets, attention to detail and acting are all of the most sublime quality - you take that as read with Deadwood - but I would just have liked to see Hearst get what was coming to him...