Given the news that Andy Sipowicz will beat his last perp to a bloody pulp next season, the timing couldn't be better for his creator, David Milch, and the gritty western he's set to unveil.
As overseer of NYPD Blue in its early, best years, Milch is widely credited as the voice -- the creative force -- behind Dennis Franz's hard-boiled Sipowicz, as well as the architect of the show's original, raw tone. Milch left the Blue awhile ago -- it shows -- and, with his most celebrated character about to enter his twilight, he's turned his scalding writing and fascination with the law to a genre that defined good and evil for decades before it collapsed under the weight of its own cliches.
The result is the most accomplished western saga since Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (don't get me started about Open Range -- or better yet, don't wake me up while it's on) and another feather in the cap of HBO.
It premieres March 21 on Movie Central in Canada.
Set two weeks after Custer's Last Stand at Little Big Horn, Deadwood fuses historical and fictional characters in the real-life town that the series is named for.
The appeal to Milch is obvious: Deadwood, because it was an outlaw settlement on Indian territory, was completely lawless because U.S. laws didn't apply.
For someone who has been exploring law and order for more than 20 years -- his association with Blue mogul Steven Bochco began with Hill Street Blues -- investigating a truly lawless environment must have been irresistible. It would also seem inevitable.
After all, before cop shows were the alpha males of tough-TV, cowboys were the gun-toting enforcers audiences tuned into.
After screening the first few episodes, it's clearly a testament to Milch's talents that you are left with not only the feeling that he has revitalized a dormant genre, but the revelation there remains much here for other producers to explore in the future.
Timothy Olyphant -- from Go and the upcoming Girl Next Door -- stars as Seth Bullock, a real-life ex-lawman who fled to Deadwood to open a business. The stellar ensemble is rounded out by Ian McShane (Sexy Beast), Canadian Molly Parker and Keith Carradine as doomed gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok.
Part-deconstruction, part-pulp fiction, Deadwood effectively submerges the viewer into a primitive, desperate time when life was dirt-cheap. The real Deadwood, after all was a grimy, soiled magnet for society's dregs -- sort of like reality-TV -- and Milch doesn't flinch from the grim truth.
His actors, unlike most cinematic cowboys, are actually convincing as a filthy, flea-bitten lot. And the show's violence -- mostly -- steers clear of Young Guns-style blazes of cartoonish glory, favouring instead a callow gruesomeness that is effectively chilling.
For fans, Milch has kept the genre's chief trappings: rickety, tossed-together towns and Main Street shootouts, after all, are as expected as whiskey-soaked saloons and an ethos that is unadulterated all-American lore: a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.
Milch, at least for now, seems intent on balancing convention with invention -- something he did to great acclaim on Blue.
If Deadwood succeeds, it will be because he has managed to captivate audiences with a world that seems as relevant now as it did during its populist heyday.
