Hulu is Now Streaming HBO’s Best-Kept Secret of All Time; Don’t Miss It
One of HBO’s best shows has secretly, silently just arrived on Hulu. Now, that could mean almost anything from HBO’s heyday, be it Six Feet Under or Oz (both of which I watched way, way too young), but I’m talking about Deadwood here. Go watch it, especially now that it’s currently the second most-watched show on the platform. I’ll wait here. If you’re unfamiliar and need a little refresher, check out a trailer and synopsis below:
Per Hulu: HBO’s hit drama series that follows the evolution of an American frontier town, and the ruthless power struggle between its inhabitants.
Deadwood ran for three seasons on HBO and concluded its run with a swift cancellation. There was a well-received movie released several years later in 2019, but for many Deadwood fans, it was too little, too late.
What exactly happened then?
According to contemporaneous reports, Deadwood was doing respectable, if not exactly massive, numbers for HBO. Its first season bolstered by The Sopranos, was great, though with Season 2, HBO opted to have Deadwood lead the night. Conventionally in both cable and network programming, shows are scheduled in blocks, and high performers are often placed first, the hope being a kind of viewership Reaganomics where viewers would trickle down from one show to another.
Often, that kind of programming is used for newer shows without an ardent audience yet. Let the heavyweights deliver a knockout, and then let the new guy help them wind down.
By the time Season 3 concluded, Deadwood was still doing well, and reportedly, the cast and crew even had a tentative go-ahead to get started on another season. Details are murky from there, with disparate accounts of what, exactly, went down. But creator David Milch and a few calls with HBO later, Deadwood was no more. That the entire decision occurred during a single day of conversations is even more confounding.
The Dead Are Back on Hulu
Like so many of the best—Deadwood is, by all accounts, widely considered to be one of the finest television series ever made—the show was gone too soon. Those first three seasons are worth watching, even if they don’t quite encapsulate the full vision of the show its key creators might have had from the start.
It’s far from the expletive-ridden western it first purports to be, and I can promise more than anything it will be one of the best binge-watches you catch this year. Streaming in its entirety on Hulu, there’s no better time to dive in and see what all the fuss was about.
What do you think? Were you a fan of Deadwood when it first premiered? What other series are worth checking out on Hulu? Let me know over on Twitter @Chadiscollins..
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