Anti-Hero
3 min readJul 13, 2021
Deadwood’s Al Swearengen is the Prototype for TV’s Best Characters
What does it take for a long-form TV series to endure? Job one may be extraordinary character development. The main players must be nuanced — heroic in some ways and decidedly flawed in others. And quite often they must evolve from one into the other or inhabit the gray terrain between. This often manifests in what I’d characterize as slow turns-of-the-tide.
