Hell On Wheels is AMC's brand new TV series, to sit alongside their hits Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. This Western is set during the construction of the Transcontinental railroad in 1865; its title a phrase used to describe the itinerant collection of hastily-built gambling houses, saloons, dance halls, and brothels that followed the army of Union Pacific railroad workers westward as they constructed the railroad. The 10-part season stars Anson Mount, Dominique McElligott, Colm Meaney, Common, Ben Esler, Eddie Spears and Philip Burke.
What do you make of the trailer, which uses footage from the already-completed pilot while the rest of the show is filmed over the summer? As regular readers will know, the Western genre isn't one I'm naturally drawn to. That said, there have been a few movies made in the past five years that I've responded to more favourably (3:10 To Yuma, The Assassination Of Jesse James...), so maybe we've hit a period of time where writers/directors can deliver something set in the Wild West that appeals to me. I just feel a cloud of tedium float over my head when I see Westerns icons like saloons, trains, banks, gold mines and gunslingers. There's something about the genre that feels like it's always a patchwork of the same old things.
Anyway, enough about me and my crazy anti-Western talk. I'll be giving this series a chance, how about you?
AMC will premiere Hell On Wheels this autumn.
