If you can tolerate the utterly foul language. Worst I have ever heard. I stopped watching it on account of that. I'm no prude but this was well over the top. Even the Sopranos didn't match it.
Agree. The wife and I rented it and got about 15 minutes into it before we turned it off. We're not prudes, but the foul language was gratuitous and over-the-top.
It does have a very high "bad language" count, but I disagree about it being "over the top". For the era and setting, it's entirely fitting. Furthermore, the writer has an excellent "ear" for when and where to use it, and for which characters. It's not at all gratuitous. For characters like, say, Swearengen or Jane or Trixie, it would be bizarrely out of character for them to *not* swear like they do.
There's even a certain "poetry" to the deft way in which the writer uses foul language for certain characters, it flows with the dialog and the character's mental state at the time, it doesn't feel as if it's just peppered at random into the lines like it does in some shows.
The same goes for the writer's use of "non-foul" language -- I can't recall any other TV show or movie that has ever had each character's lines be so tailored to their individual personalities and backgrounds -- they all use different vocabularities, manners of speech, styles, grammar, etc. fitting their characters. Unlike a lot of shows, a great deal of care has been taken to pay attention not just to *what* they say, but *how* they say it. It's another one of the many "attentions to detail" in "Deadwood" which make it an absolute joy to watch, and one of the best shows ever put on television.
I agree with you, although the Sopranos' gay voyage probably cost HBO a fair number of viewers.
One aspect of Deadwood, I find to be grossly revisionist is the volume of foul language. This doesn't mean the Wild West didn't have its fair share of ribald behavior, but the impressions left by John Wayne in True Grit, were probably closer to the norm throughout the settling period, than the saloon/whorehouse represented in Deadwood.
Chivalry, religion and the old country still had a marked influence upon social settings throughout the west.
Ditto that.
I saw a couple episodes of the first season and when I heard the "c" word used again and again, I didn't watch anymore.
BTW, what evidence is there that they used such vulgarities back then.