Hell on Wheels

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.