There are certain TV series that are hailed as extremely prestigious or otherwise laudable in their time, and which ultimately fade from public consciousness. For most of my life, I often read about how Moonlighting was one of the most unconventional TV series ever made and was extremely ahead of its time, only for the show to be all but inaccessible due to music licensing issues until very recently, when it came to Tubi, the people’s streaming service. Around Y2K, thinkpieces popped up all over talking about the three contemporary television shows that were ushering in a new era of respectability for TV as a medium: The Sopranos (which remains in the public consciousness), The X-Files (which remains a strong brand in some ways but which was unable to maintain excitement enough to support a reboot/sequel series for very long), and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (which was so powerful that it created TV Tropes but which went largely underdiscussed in wider culture until recent news of a potential reboot). HBO was the primary place where you could find ongoing series which were stylistic, cinematic, and profound, as made clear in their slogan “It’s not TV; it’s HBO,” and that remained the case for a long time. In addition to The Sopranos, other series like Six Feet Under and The Wire are also strong contenders for the “greatest TV series ever made” epithet. I also remember a strong contingent of people, mostly on the Television Without Pity (R.I.P.)’s message boards, arguing that Deadwood, which ran for three seasons between 2004 and 2006, was the heir apparent to this designation. After finally watching The Sopranos for the first time last year, I’ve spent a few months of this one finally watching Deadwood, and I have to say that those folks have a pretty decent case. 

As a series, Deadwood revolves mostly around Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), who runs a saloon and brothel known as The Gem, in the mining encampment of Deadwood, a settlement in the then-unincorporated Dakota Territory. Nominally, the lead was Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphant), a former lawman who came to Deadwood seeking a new start co-running a hardware store with his friend Sol Star (John Hawkes). As a series that would play with the tropes and conventions of the western genre, it makes sense that the just Bullock and the conniving, clever Swearengen would have an antagonistic relationship with Bullock as the main character (just as lawmen usually were in these pieces; Gunsmoke is about Matt Dillon, Gunslinger is about secret agent Cord, and Bat Masterson is about, well, Bat Masterson) and Swearengen as the thorn in his side. The show quickly realized that examining the complex compartmentalization of Swearengen’s morality was a much more dramatically rich vein to mine, with Swearengen becoming the most dynamic character while Bullock remains the more static one. Bullock’s first season arc largely deals with his slow realization that Deadwood’s lawlessness demands that he take on the role of sheriff despite his reluctance, as well as his burgeoning romance with wealthy widow Alma Garret (Molly Parker). Bullock has a wife back in Montana, but it’s not a marriage of love but of responsibility, as he married his brother’s widow after the elder Bullock was killed as a member of the Union Army. He is torn between his and Alma’s love and the knowledge that his wife will have to join him eventually (which she does, along with Bullock’s nephew/adopted son at the beginning of the second season, played by Anna Gunn). 

Bullock’s partner Sol never gets as much character exploration, but he serves as the motivator for a wonderful character arc for prostitute Trixie (Paula Malcomson), who starts out as the de facto captain of the leg spreading team at The Gem. She’s initially suicidal but comes to recognize her importance to the community with fits and starts, first by defying Swearengen’s orders to help kill a child who is the lone survivor of an attack by highwaymen who are in his employ, and then later by helping Alma through withdrawals from laudanum (Al had ordered her to supply Alma with the stuff to ensure her compliance when he low-balled her on an offer for her land). She finds herself drawn to the awkward Sol and the two slowly fall for one another, although her loyalty remains split between Sol and Swearengen. There’s also “Calamity” Jane Canary (Robin Weigert), who is frequently the best part of the show, as she pontificates in a state of extreme inebriation about how lost she is in life without the direction that she got from her loose partnership with “Wild Bill” Hickok. (Keith Carradine played Wild Bill during the series, but if you’ve ever heard the name “Deadwood” outside of the context of this series, it’s probably because it’s known as the place where Wild Bill was murdered, so no surprises that he’s not back for the reunion film.) The only person from whom Weigert can’t steal the scene is America’s darling Brad Dourif, whose Doc Cochran finds himself on the frontier on the run from warrants for grave robbing while also being haunted by the sheer amount of death that he witnessed and was powerless to stop during the Civil War. There are dozens of other characters, but you’d be much better served by watching the show (it’s less than 40 episodes) than by my recital of their names and attributes, but these are the ones to know for the purposes of the movie.

The only remaining character of high plot importance not yet mentioned is George Hearst (played by Mr. Delta Burke, Gerald McRainey). The show slowly builds to his arrival; the first season’s central conflict revolves around Swearengen and Bullock’s rivalry, while in the second season Hearst becomes a spectral figure whose impending arrival is heralded by the appearance of Francis Wolcott (Garret Dillahunt), his “scout” whose sociopathic malevolence overshadows Swearengen’s. The man himself arrives in the flesh in the third season, and he is a figure of such pure, unadulterated evil that his present looms over the encampment. All the while, Deadwood itself becomes less and less of a “frontier” and more connected to the U.S., geographically and legislatively, as the future is always coming. Famously, Deadwood ended without an “ending,” as the series was renewed for two additional seasons after season two, only to have the fourth season pulled from under them. As such, the end of that season deals with Hearst—having already demonstrated how little he values human life by having his army of Pinkertons murder the miners in his employ who talk about collective action and possibly arranging the killing of the beloved only son of his lifetime servant—arranging for the murder of one of the show’s most kind-hearted and beloved characters. This action prompts Trixie to attempt to kill him, which fails, and Swearengen chooses to kill an innocent prostitute in his employ and submit her body to Hearst as that of his attempted assassin in order to prevent retaliatory action and protect Trixie’s life. Then Hearst just rides out of town, hands technically clean, free of consequence. Hearst is such a monstrous character that, with only a few episodes left in the series, I told my friend that I hoped the show would pull a full on Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and straight up kill the bastard, historical accuracy be damned. Alas. 

But then! In 2019, HBO commissioned a reunion movie to wrap things up. I’m generally wary of these kinds of things. Even when I was a kid I could tell that the Growing Pains reunion movie wasn’t very good, I still remember the gut-punching disappointment of the Arrested Development continuation, and one late night during quarantine I saw Family Ties Vacation and thought I might have already been dead and in hell. Then again, well, you know how much I talk about this. As it turns out, I needn’t have been so concerned, as Deadwood: The Movie is an absolute delight. 

As the film opens, Alma Garret arrives in Deadwood, now officially a part of the U.S. (South Dakota specifically) and connected to the wider world not just by the telegraph that was newly installed at the beginning of season three, but also telephone and even railroad. She is accompanied by her ward, the adopted Sophia (the little girl whose family was murdered in the series premiere), and she is reunited first with Charlie Utter (Dayton Callie) and then with Bullock; the former recommends that Alma stay in the latter’s hotel, Bullock and Star having expanded from hardware sales to hoteliers. Trixie is pregnant with Sol’s child, and she insists upon waiting until the child is safely born before she will marry him. Despite the fact that when we last saw him Doc seemed to be in the throes of consumption, he’s still alive and kicking, and he tends to both Trixie and Swearengen, whose lifetime of drinking is threatening to catch up with him, fatally, any day now. As part of the statehood celebrations, Hearst returns to Deadwood to give a speech as a visiting senator from California; he understands that he’s unwelcome when faced with so many people who have not forgotten what he did a decade prior, but he nonetheless has a minor parade through the thoroughfare. Trixie, still furious about the murder of [redacted], refuses to hide as everyone recommends and instead bursts out onto her balcony to call the murderer a coward to his face. Hearst, incensed upon realizing that he was deceived by a decoy corpse before, demands that the nearly infirm Swearengen help him acquire Charlie Utter’s land, as that tract is vital to his plans to expand upon and profit from completing telephone lines. Then, Utter turns up dead. 

I am of two minds about the way that flashbacks are used throughout this film to make connections to the narrative that came before. For the most part, they play out in brief flashes of moments, almost like stylized memories interjecting into the present. These feel organic, and they’re so short that they’re almost subliminal. On the other hand, there are several that play out for a little too long, all of them concerning Trixie’s failed killing of Hearst ten years ago and Swearengen’s offering up of a different woman’s body to cover for her. Admittedly, this is a moderately complicated narrative development to have to recap for the audience, and I understand that I don’t need this repeated back to me because I just watched the final few episodes a couple of weeks ago, rather than the thirteen years that had passed for those who had watched the series in its original run and were now back just for this movie. Sometimes, the little snatches of the past are beautiful; Al lies in bed with one in a long line of women under his employ who have given him comfort over the years, and as she curls her head to his chest, so too does Trixie curl up next to him, all that time ago but also here and now, and the moments like this were the ones where my breath caught in my chest. For all the ways that I had been impressed by Deadwood, I had rarely ever been moved by it. I liked the way that the relationships developed, and I was shocked by the deaths of certain characters, and I may have rooted for Bullock’s wife to be disposed of so that he and Alma could be together. Six Feet Under, The Wire, and—yes—Buffy had moved me in their time, but Deadwood was something that was a technical marvel to me, a masterpiece of dialogue and dovetailing plotting, a solid and remarkable genre deconstruction. And then, in this reunion movie, they managed to make me not just enjoy it, but find some meaning in it. 

Of course, some of that can be attributed to the fact that all our friends are here! Why, it’s Tom Nuttall, who runs the No. 10 Saloon, and he’s alive! Swearengen’s minions Dan Dority and Johnny are still standing around at the bar at The Gem, waiting for Al to come down and dish out orders that are an order of magnitude above their own cleverness. Samuel Fields is fishing in the stream at Charlie Utter’s property, and Aunty Lou is there to help Trixie with her difficult childbirth! Con Stapleton’s given up on being a goon (or perhaps merely had to find new work since the death of actor Powers Boothe meant that the character of Cy Tolliver had likewise passed) and become a minister! Joanie’s running the Bella Union now and she and Calamity Jane are shacked up together. Bullock and wife have a family of three kids now, and Harry Manning finally, finally got that fire wagon that he was always droning on about. In fairness, Manning’s frequent raising of the issue in the series seems to have been intended to foreshadow the eventual destruction of the original Deadwood encampment by fire, as it was in real life, and would likely have been the series finale if the show had continued. Ironically, Deadwood actually does pull a OUATIH-style historical revision, as the town is still standing in 1889 in this film despite the fact that historically, Deadwood was destroyed in a blaze in 1879. And! At the end of this film, even though we don’t get to see Hearst get everything that’s coming to him, we do get to bear witness to him being arrested for Utter’s killing, and as Bullock carts him off to a cell the people of Deadwood get to kick him around a little (Bullock even considers letting them finish Hearst off!). It’s a very satisfying ending, especially as we also get to see Trixie and Sol married, with Swearengen walking her down the aisle in his final days. It feels complete. It feels whole. 

… Except for one thing. There is simply not enough of E.B. Farnum (William Sanderson) in this movie. That makes some sense, as his role in the show proper had declined quite a bit toward the end. Early on, Farnum’s ownership of the only hotel in town granted him access to characters whose activities he could then report to Swearengen and assist in the barkeeper’s machinations, not to mention that it allowed an endless parade of transient characters to meet and comment upon Farnum and their hilarious disgust for him. Farnum’s weaselly nature, his perpetual dampness of the hand, and his wheedling voice made him the butt of every joke, with his appointment as mayor of the town by a committee allowing him nominal authority and no real power being the ultimate pinnacle of his ridiculousness. As a result of being involved in fewer shenanigans, the show gave Farnum an even more lowly worm for him to belittle and mock, but the audience often found him alone, delivering soliloquies about his social impotence and his anger at his position, and they were always comedic showstoppers. Here, we get to see a little bit of him, as he plays a crucial role in the resolution of Charlie Utter’s murder; he has apparently fashioned a crawlspace in his hotel that allows him to spy on rooms Norman Bates style, and his eavesdropping on Hearst reveals the plan for two of his goons to kill the only witness to Utter’s slaying. Despite the seriousness of the situation, it’s still hysterical to watch Farnum try to get himself out of his latest predicament, and I simply wish there was more of him in this. At least for now we have YouTube compilations.

-Mark “Boomer” Redmond