SERIES PREMIERE: I’ve been waiting since
Deadwood for another quality show such as this, and here it comes: The Western is back! Michelle Dockery, who already showed off her acting range by going aggressively from the pampered daughter of
Downton Abbey to the Southern con artist in
Good Behavior, takes on another very different genre and role here. In this seven-part Western drama, she plays a frontier woman who’s handy with a shotgun, twice a widow, and rebel enough to be attracted to a notorious gunman (played by Jack O’Connell) who rides onto her property at night. It’s not love at first sight – but it is shoot at first sight, and it isn’t he who does the shooting. Co-stars in this beautifully shot Western, which is produced by Steven Soderbergh and written and directed by Scott Frank (who adapted Elmore Leonard’s
Out of Sight for Soderbergh), include Jeff Daniels and Sam Waterston as grizzled tough guys on opposite sides of the law. And
Godless is clever in both its approach and its focus: No matter how many Westerns you’ve seen, you’re likely to be surprised by the way, in one scene, that Daniels’ bad guy is disarmed.
For a full review, see David Hinckley’s All Along the Watchtower.