Okay, time for my first Netflix recommendation. I love it when Netflix adds new content as I am an avid devourer of movies and tv series. I usually prefer to wait till a new season of a series has finished and then watch it in as few sittings as I can manage, usually 1-2. I have had to start slowing myself down and not watching all the new stuff I am interested in as soon is it becomes available, as recently I have found myself in long spans of time with nothing new that I am interested in to watch. Some of these dead spots have lead to finding some really great shows I never would have found other wise, but for the most part they are just full of sheer boredom and me either re-watching things or killing time with sub-par crap.
The show I want to talk about today is called Hell on Wheels, from AMC. Hell on Wheels was AMC's second highest watched show last year behind The Walking Dead (according to Wikipedia). The first season is a short 10 Episodes, each around 45 minutes long. The show takes place in the post Civil War reconstruction era (one of my all time favorite periods of history) and is centered around the character Cullen Bohannon, an ex-Confederate Soldier out for revenge for the death of his wife and son while he was away fighting the war. The setting for the showis in the main camp for the Union Pacific Railway as it is being built as part of the US Government's Transcontinental Reilroad project after the civil war, to which Cullen plays a big part.
While the main focus of the plot is on the building of the Railroad and Cullen finding the men responsible for his wife and son's death, there are are also several really fantastic sub plots weaved into a really complex and interesting web of stories between the main and supporting characters; as with many period piece shows of this caliber. Hell on Wheels does a really good job of bringing you in and enthralling you in the stories of each character depicted while also shocking you with the harsh realities and bloody consequences of life lived on the frontier. I was really impressed at how much character development many of even the most exterior character went through in the 10 episodes of Season 1 and I am already scrambling to figure out how I am going to watch the new Season 2 episodes which begin airing on AMC on August 12th.
If you have access to Netflix, I highly recommend that you check out Hell on Wheels for yourself... though you probably shouldn't let the kids watch it do to the level of Blood, Gore, and Prostitution depicted in the series.
-Sub Lesser Management
