Hell on Wheels
Cast & Key People
▶
Our Review
AMC’s post-Civil War western about the building of the first transcontinental railroad, and the mobile hell town that follows the construction west. Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount, weathered gravitas incarnate), a former Confederate soldier, joins the Union Pacific crew to hunt the men who murdered his wife, and finds a new war: against the railroad’s corrupt bureaucracy (Colm Meaney’s Doc Durant, a magnificent sleaze), against the elements, and against his own vengeance.
The milieu is the show’s strength: “Hell on Wheels”, the tent city of saloons, brothels, and churches that moves with the rails, is a genuine TV setting nobody had done, and the supporting cast (Common’s Elam Ferguson, a freedman working the rails; Christopher Heyerdahl’s enforcer with an ear necklace) gives it texture. Five seasons track the railroad to completion with real historical scaffolding. The mid run Mormon detour sags, but the finale finds Bohannon a fitting end, a man who builds things now.
Verdict: Watch it. Deadwood‘s cousin, less profane poetry, more locomotive, but worthy.
