Hell on Wheels

Fantastic production, writing, and acting transport you back to 19th-century America during the construction of the First Transcontinental Railroad. Colm Meany shines as a robber baron.

Solidly above average all around the board. The approach is straight forward enough to hold true to the genre, and it certainly has its own style despite shamelessly borrowing many of its mechanisms from the superior Deadwood. Sets, detail, stand out as pluses. Some character cliches are distracting, but somewhat mitigated by offbeats like the Swede. Can be too deliberate in its edginess - but better to exaggerate than to fall short. Some unnecessary narrative lends to flimsy overall depth.

Great characters, especially Cullen Bohannon.

TV: Overlooked this at the time it arrived, but after one season this seems like a solid attempt at a more upbeat Deadwood, or alternatively a long form Red Dead Redemption with more nuanced writing, which is fine. I appreciate the dedication to arc storytelling shown so far, but the show also doesn't take itself too seriously and has some fun pulling the characters around. Worth a look for the quality photography and music. Good stuff. | S1: 75

Cool setting, decent characters, but ultimately fell into the same trap as "Sons of Anarchy." The writers ran out of ideas and just decided to switch everyone's allegiances every five seconds to give them all something to do.

Probably not as good as the rating but there is such a lack of material from the period it seems fresh.

The verdict is still out for me on whether I consider it good or just ok. At its best it has a nice Western-y vibe to it. It also deserves props for killing off characters with impunity. It has some slow arcs and is quite grim and humorless, though. Like, I think The Walking Dead has more comedy. I will update my score/review once I've seen the rest of the series.