There are only a few TV shows that actively discourage multitasking.
But no show resists the occasional moment of inattention more than HBO’s “Deadwood,” which returns for its third season Sunday with an episode that requires not just an unblinking eye, but a keen ear.
My own ear, after a year away, needed a touch of recalibrating. When, in the second scene of Sunday’s “Tell Your God to Ready for Blood,” some of the actors began speaking Cornish, I thought at first I just must not have been listening carefully enough.
Because, profanity aside, the English spoken in David Milch’s 1870s mining camp isn’t exactly what most of us are used to hearing on television, or anywhere else.
After two seasons of “Deadwood,” though, I’ve learned to love the language, even the language that at first seemed so unlovable.
Amid the dust and the dirty dealings, it’s language that turns out to matter in Milch’s Deadwood, whether it’s a worried Sheriff Bullock (Timothy Olyphant) consulting his schoolteacher wife (Anna Gunn) about the wording of a campaign speech, banker and mine owner Alma Garrett (Molly Parker) rehearsing her approach to a formidable opponent (Gerald McRaney) or a murder committed in plain sight, the motive initially masked by the choice of a different tongue.
“Nothing showy is the main thing,” Bullock tells his wife, a tall order in a show where character’s often revealed in cadence as much as costume (or relative cleanliness).
Words matter.
So do actions, of course, and there’s plenty of that in the five episodes I’ve seen so far, as well as some sizzling moments between the two Macs – Ian McShane as the too aptly named Al Swearengen and McRaney as George Hearst, whose presence in Deadwood promises to shift the power yet again.
McRaney, who’s listed as a recurring guest star, gets to show what he can do as he goes toe-to-toe with McShane. Count on him giving nightmares to fans of “Major Dad.”
Milch and HBO earlier this week announced a deal for two two-hour movies in lieu of a fourth season, which may or may not satisfy the hordes who cried foul when it looked as if this season might be it for “Deadwood.”
Either way, this is a show that rewards those who can live – and watch – in the moment.
Watch it the way too many people watch “The Sopranos,” laying bets on who’ll get whacked next and counting down to some bitter end, and you’ll miss a lot.
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Summer TV, up until now an excuse for the broadcast networks to foist their also-ran “reality” shows on an audience that might rather be fishing, returns with a roar this weekend.
As long as you’ve got cable, that is.
HBO follows up “Deadwood” with the return of the much lighter “Entourage” (10 p.m. Sunday) which seems to get better every season – and premieres with Mercedes Ruehl as Vince’s (Adrian Grenier) flying-phobic mother – and a new sitcom, “Lucky Louie,” starring comedian Louis C.K.
There’s heavier lifting over on USA, where “The 4400” (9 p.m. Sunday) is also back for a third season. The two-hour premiere reveals some surprising changes in at least two of the returnees and pushes the tension between a world of so-called ordinary humans and the new, improved variety that’s supposed to save that world to new heights.
Somewhat subtler than “X-Men: The Last Stand” – now there are two hours I’ll never have back – “The 4400” covers some of the same ground as “X-Men” and even the ABC-canceled “Invasion,” asking, among other things, whether the greatest stumbling block to human progress might not be humans themselves.
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DEADWOOD
9 p.m. Sunday
HBO
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