Hell on Wheels: The Complete Fourth Season

This fatalistic, violent Western that airs on the AMC channel follows a mobile, multiethnic boomtown of immigrants, fortune-seekers, fanatics, freed slaves, psychos, and renegades, as they move west with the laying of the Union Pacific railway line. The fourth season finds progress halted by Wyoming mountain terrain, with the characters semi-settled into the semi-anarchic, murder-tainted Cheyenne. The show's battle-scarred hero, Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount), who was last seen as an unwilling guest in a Mormon fort, manages to escape with his young LDS wife only to become a pawn/participant in the power games between railway boss Thomas Durant (Colm Meaney) and ruthless territorial governor John Campbell (Jake Weber). Cruel ethical dilemmas often result in death (sometimes even of key players), and there is one particularly striking depiction of a hanging from the POV of the condemned. Although tolerance of LGBT relationships and a modern attitude towards racial differences may be a bit anachronistic (but welcome), this is a fine historical drama in which real-life figures such as Campbell and Brigham Young are part of the mix. Compiling all 13 episodes from the 2014 fourth season, extras include behind-the-scenes featurettes and a set tour. Recommended. (C. Cassady)