Deadwood: Season 1, Episode 12- Sold Under Sin

"Announcing your plans is a good way to hear God laugh..."

This season finale is fascinating, thematic, perfect, and very much centred on the difficulties and dilemmas facing its two central characters as the military and magistrate arrive. Annexation and civilisation are almost here, and both Al and Seth must face what it means for them.

We begin as the camera pans away from Al, for whom the moment of truth arrives: the magistrate with the warrant for his arrest on a capital charge. He eventually deals with this problem decisively, but not without risks that the problem will return. And yet he carries out a more merciful killing, too: that of poor Reverend Smith, at the subtle urging of an upset and despairing Doc, who can at least take solace in the fact that his care has made a positive difference to a cheerful and smiling Jewel as he drinks himself to oblivion.

Al has other problems, though. The newly appointed sheriff is corrupt and, worse, acting in the interests of Cy in striking at Mr Wu and the Chinese. And this is not a problem, to Mr Wu’s fury, he can make go away.

Worse, Alma’s father turns out to be an utter blackguard, who wants to use his daughter to finance his growing and huge gambling debts- and is willing to blackmail his own daughter to achieve this. Seth, ever the gentleman, gives him a jolly good thrashing for being a cad and boulder- but comes close to arranging his murder at the hands of Al. At last he comes back from the abyss, but not before breaking his empty wedding vows by finally shagging Alma- and accepting, at last, with Al’s blessing, the position of sheriff.

This is a finely crafted, multifaceted ending to a superlative first season. I’ll be back before too long to begin the second...

Deadwood: Season 1, Episode 11: Jewel's Boot Is Made for Walking

"You pay or she pays..."

Al Swearengen is truly the puppetmaster in this penultimate episodes, pulling all sorts of strings. We begin with him bribing Silas Adams to make his judge go away, and it is he who ultimately decides on a dodgy new sheriff- although he later seems to warm to the idea of Seth. He has worrying designs on the increasingly unwell Reverend. His jealousy at Sol when he finds he's been sleeping with Trixie on a non-commercial basis is solved by his asserting his "rights" as pimp.And yet this, along with the judge's warrant over his head, could be the harbinger of the potential threat to his position of the coming of civilisation and annexation. In controlling the process, can he control the threat?

Less clever is Alma's dodgy father, who is after her claim but is seen through by all, although he explicitly gives his blessing to her and Seth, of whom he approves, in full knowledge that Seth's wife and ward are coming. Ominously, too, Tolliver gets the surviving junkie to spread racist rumours about the Chinese, rumours that reflect badly on Swearengen, our antihero.

Yet it's not all theme and simmering plot threads: poor Jewel and the Doc get a lovely scene. As we approach the end it becomes clearer and clearer just how finely crafted this first season has been. This is first class television.