DEADWOOD'S SWEARENGEN: Swear Engine

...My feeling is that Deadwood will be an examination of morality. About men with an untouched world at their feet, with the power to turn it in the direction they wish. Some men, like Swearengen, want to spoil the land for their own gain. Law and order is a threat to his violent, corrupt existence. Other men, like Bullock, a smart, tough man born to lead, naturally gravitates to the exact opposite. He's inclined to protect, to aid, to do right by his fellow man. Deadwood is something of an analysis of the inception of law, and of how an insulated universe can numbly follow the rule of its sanctioned-or-not leader...-- Darwin Mayflower, on Underground Online, first decent piece of writing about David Milch's new HBO series.

I was kinda hoping this western would be about a lawless frontier where "respectable" eastern bluebloods trample the constitution and wage war on brown-skins, but I think Mayflower has a better sense of it. No Middle East allegories popping up just yet. But the male-female stuff is brutal, and the expletives are the most creative use of vernacular since LARRY SANDERS. Keith Carradine made a broodingly recessive and self-destructive appearance as Wild Bill Hickok, and Ian McShane's Al Swearengen swings between entertaining and psychopathic (you'll remember him from SEXY BEAST). The sleeper, though, is Timothy Olyphant, who's slowly revealing himself as a major star.