By Choice

In commeration of another series dead before its time, or not, Matt Zoller Seitz over at The House Next Door has declared this week Deadweek and is devoting it to Deadwood. Here he tries to explain what he likes about it:

HBO's "Deadwood," which begins its second season tonight, is the greatest dramatic series in the history of American television. It attains this distinction by doing so many difficult, contradictory things at once. It is, in no particular order, a western, a gangster picture, a political drama, a lewd farce and a comedy of manners; an operatic potboiler chock full of sex, violence and profanity; a sustained long-form narrative that interweaves parallel plots tighter than hangman's rope; a satire on American hypocrisy and greed; a portrait of needy, ambitious people who see through other people's illusions but cleave tight to their own; a revisionist look at frontier life; a case study of a civilization struggling to create itself, and a weekly showcase for characters and dialogue so rich in complexity and contradiction that they deserve to be called Shakespearean.

He's right.