This was the problem with Deadwood. Despite the critical praise and awards attention from the Emmys and Golden Globes, it never exactly pulled in Game of Thrones - style numbers. The first season of Deadwood averaged a respectable 4. A downward ratings trajectory makes an early cancellation inevitable.
Every episode of Deadwood was densely packed with inscrutable characters and complicated dialogue. Deadwood was already a difficult show to make, even before creator David Milch's tendency toward last-minute rewrites.
Timothy Olyphant told the audience at Film Independent Presents' "An Evening with Deadwood " via IndieWire about the time Milch came to him in his trailer to tell him that he'd just decided to kill off Bullock's nephew Ian McShane remembers complete rewrites coming in so late that the pages still bore the warmth of the copy machine.
More takes means more money, and Deadwood wasn't a cheap show to begin with, on account of its ultra-realistic re-creation of 19th century Deadwood, South Dakota, and everything in it. It must have been hard for HBO to justify keeping Deadwood around when it didn't bring in huge ratings.
Long before the era of Peak TV brought high-quality content to most every cable network and streaming service, HBO held itself up as the home of prestige television. In the mids, the flavor of HBO was solidly hip, envelope-pushing shows set in the present day. But among those shows about cranky TV writers, deluded actresses, cranky British actors, depressed mob bosses, and plural marriage sat Deadwood, an often brutal, slow-moving Western where the characters talked like they were doing Shakespeare when they weren't swearing.
Deadwood was an anomaly on HBO's schedule — it was simply too weird to live. While Deadwood was never a ratings smash — with fewer and fewer viewers over time — casting directors and the people who make movies and TV shows were among those aware of Deadwood and its talented ensemble cast.
By the time of the show's third season in , many Deadwood performers were already looking to move on to other roles and other challenges. For many parties, Deadwood 's cancellation was well-timed. It was the victim of corporate fighting. The ruse works, Hearst is satisfied, and leaves Deadwood to see to other business.
The residents of Deadwood are beneath him. But an ending where a rich man commits countless sins while receiving virtually no comeuppance was always going to feel like a letdown, no matter how true to life it remains to this day. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here. Big Little Lies was made as a miniseries and still got a renewal from HBO; the streaming network Netflix has renewed low-buzz shows like Altered Carbon and Ozark despite their mixed reviews.
But unlike those two dramas, it never got a proper conclusion, ending on a confused, if at times poignant, note. It was an expensive show to produce, given its vast ensemble cast, extravagant sets most of which still stand in California , and the unpredictable nature of Milch, who was known for running over schedule and delivering script pages the morning of filming.
When Deadwood was canceled, Milch was already busy working on another TV project for HBO, the truly bizarre surfing drama John From Cincinnati , which crashed and burned after one season. He then moved on to Luck , centered on the world of horse racing and starring Dustin Hoffman, but it was canceled in the middle of the production of its second season because of concerns over a series of animal deaths that occurred during filming.
So why not let the magic of Peak TV reverse that trend? From the s, only two big shows have returned, and as with Deadwood , each was pitched as the undoing of some great mistake. They both happened on Netflix. First, there was Arrested Development , brought back in seven years after Fox canceled it.
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