Unflagging brilliance of its execution

Matt Feeney appreciates Deadwood:

If you gutted out that first exhausting night and tuned in to subsequent episodes, you’ve witnessed a show both politically insightful and aesthetically rousing. As the season has progressed, the characters’ motivations have become more transparent, their relationships more stable and human, and public crisis has spurred them to form a loose political order. Plot lines have become not just discernable but elegant and bracing. And the saturated setting has become—thanks to an aching mandolins-and-fiddles score and the stunning natural-light cinematography—sometimes overwhelmingly beautiful.

He particularly likes the language, profanity notwithstanding. Read more.