Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #583 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-10-29
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Formats: Box set, Subtitled, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 12
• Running time: 1818 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Season One

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, 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

Season Two

Deadwood: The Complete Second Season continues the Shakespearean brilliance of the landmark first season, created by NYPD Blue head writer David Milch. Milch either wrote or supervised the writing of each of the 12 episodes in this stunning follow-up, which contains more than a few surprises for anyone who thought they knew the myriad characters in the late 19th century town of Deadwood--a mucky, ungoverned, exceptionally violent development in South Dakota. As with the first season, Deadwood continues to be about many things--survival, loyalty, alliances, duty--but all of them are happening against a titanic battle between several parties to consolidate power and real wealth in the territory. Despite his cutthroat ethics, astonishing profanity, and bursts of cruelty, it's hard not to side in this bid for a piece of America's future with saloon owner Al Swearengen (a magnificent performance by Ian McShane), a visionary monster who is nevertheless more recognisably human than his rivals. Entering an uneasy partnership with Al is Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant). Seth begins the second season by teaching Al a few lessons in chivalry, and their brief but bloody feud commences physical ailments for Al that become increasingly shocking to behold. Yet Al's difficulties have the practical effect of sidelining him for a couple of episodes while the story sets up more complex power struggles. Al takes on Deadwood's other saloon-brothel owner, the unstable Cy Tolliver (Powers Boothe), as well as an off-screen millionaire who is intent on owning all the gold-mining interests by buying out weary prospectors' claims. Meanwhile, Seth's wife and son (actually, his late brother's widow and child) arrive, an unsettling development for Seth's lover, the widow Alma Garret (Molly Parker), who soon reveals herself to be a more complicated person than in the first season. The prostitute Trixie (Paula Malcomson) begins thinking about her future and asserts independence from Al by having sex with Seth's friend, Sol Star (John Hawkes). Best of all, Calamity Jane (Robin Weigert) is back and more endearingly uncivilized than ever. Special features include actor commentaries on select episodes, the best of which finds Olyphant and McShane cracking each other up while watching the season premiere. --Tom Keogh

Season Three

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 first, second, and third series.

Customer Reviews

HBO strikes gold - again!
1876. The Black Hills. A gold-rush attracts the desperate, the greedy and the vicious to a frontier town called Deadwood, a two-street mining camp dominated by saloon bar owner and pimp, Al Swearengen. Against this simple but deadly backdrop, plays out a story so rich in character, detail and incident, that most other dramas seem pedestrian by comparison.

HBO seems to have hit on a winning formula but the outcome is anything but formulaic. Like Oz, The Sopranos and The Wire, Deadwood is another stunning production that this reviewer finds outstanding, especially in light of the fact that I am not overly keen on the Western genre.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Deadwood (at least for British audiences) is that the character who dominates the series, around who all things seem to revolve, cut-throat Al Swearengen is superbly acted by Ian "Lovejoy" McShane. No, really. McShane steels every scene he is in; a brutal, profane man, who talks to a box containing the decapitated head of a dead Indian, who verbally abuses his prostitutes and other employees with an acid tongue, McShane is a revelation. Around him orbit a stellar cast. I shall mention no names because each and every one of them turns in an amazing performance. When taken together, the whole ensemble shines.

The writing, too, is again full of character and subtlety, almost too much to take in at one sitting. It is both heart-felt and honest, laugh-out-loud funny and yet brutal and savage. It takes a little time for the ear to adjust to the syntax employed; the lexis, too, seems of a particular age but once attuned, this particular writing style allows a range of expression that doesn't seem permissible in contemporaneous writing.

If you have enjoyed other HBO productions but are not sure about this one because you are none too keen on the genre of cowboys, shootouts, Stetsons and cattle-rustling, Deadwood has none of it. Over the three series (and hopefully at least one full film, just to round the story off), the story is as much about encroaching civilisation on a pioneer town - the first tentative steps of the law, the advent of the telegraph, the bicycle and elections - as it is about the people who actually lived and died in the town.

The only negative aspect to this series is the lack of a full conclusion at story's end. Sure, life goes on and I certainly don't expect a trite, all-loose-ends-tied-up kind of ending but the climax just leaves so much hanging open, it is begging for another series (or possibly even a film). That said, it's about the journey, not the destination and when the ride is as memorable as Deadwood, then an open-ended conclusion is a small price to pay.

Do yourself a favour: roll the dice and take a chance on Deadwood and you will enjoy every minute that you spend in the town, every racist drunk, every plague, every tombstone. Life in the muddy quagmire was never so enjoyable.

Utter genius
As has been mentioned, there are several reviews detailing all you need to know before buying this but in my opinion this is the second best thing that HBO have ever shown, (after The Sopranos.) Utterly, utterly superb. For those of you who like language, the way in which the characters express themselves is amazingly well written and perfectly melds the clipped, obliqueness of verbal communication in the era, with the vulgarity and profanity brought out by the struggle of trying to survive in such hostile conditions. I understand that David Milch was very particular about not letting the actors ad-lib during the production, so everything you hear on screen is exactly the way it was written; genius.

And nobody but nobody, swears better than Ian McShane!

Superb series, frustrating package!
Having heard rave reviews and high praise for this series I thought I'd take a chance and invest in this box set of all three series and I'm glad to say I wasn't disappointed! I'm not going to review the series as there are enough reviews around already, but I just wanted to review the packaging of this box set which is probably the worst designed DVD box I've ever come across! I know it's difficult to package 12 discs adequately but the way this has been put together makes me wish that I had just bought each individual series box set as it's that difficult and frustrating to get into! Why do distributors insist on using complex and elaborate cardboard designs for packaging that are easily damaged, creased and in some cases start disassembling themselves! For this box set I can see no reason why they couldn't have used plastic double-disc slimcases, it would only have meant having 6 cases for heaven's sake! It's very annoying when you spend this amount of money only to be let down by the flimsy packaging, maybe it's cheaper to produce in general but this box must have given somebody a headache when it was being designed, it certainly gives me a headache! 5 stars for the series, 3 stars for the cruddy box!