Everybody swears like a trooper in the new drama series Deadwood (premiering on HBO on Tuesday at 10.15pm). The F-word is the most popular, frequently peppering the dialogue, while Channel Hop swears the C-word was used at least twice in the first episode. Visit the homepage of the West Virginia Surf Report ( www.thewvsr.com/deadwood.htm ), and (inexplicably) you'll find a blow by blow account of how many times the F-word is mentioned in the 12-part series and a breakdown of its episodic use. 'Total f***s in season one: 831; average f***s per episode: 69.3; cumulative season one f***s per minute: 1.23,' the website crows. In episode one alone, the word is uttered 55 times, or once almost every minute. Season two, already playing in the United States, sees the writers up the ante, with the word used a staggering 1,099 times. While the triple X dialogue takes some getting used to, the series is brilliant, taking us on a wild, no-holds-barred ride to the gold rush days of 1870s America. Forget the cheesy Bonanza and Gunsmoke; you can't get more realistic than Deadwood, set in a lawless gold-mining camp of the same name where there's at least one murder a day and brawls break out at the drop of a Stetson. Teeming with fortune-seekers, gunslingers, criminals and prostitutes, the town is in the Black Hills of South Dakota; the centre of a gold rush in what proved to be the richest gold strike in American history. Based on real characters, such as Calamity Jane and the legendary Wild Bill Hickok, and true events of the gold rush, the Emmy and Golden Globe award-winning series was created by David Milch of NYPD Blue, Brooklyn South and Hill Street Blues fame. The large cast is solid and believable, with British actor Ian McShane (Lovejoy, Sexy Beast) brilliantly filling the corrupt shoes of Gem Saloon owner and crime boss Al Swearengen, while Timothy Olyphant (Scream 2, Dreamcatcher) is perfect as poker-faced former marshal Seth Bullock. Veteran actor Keith Carradine (Bonanza: Bushwacked!, A Thousand Acres) is the world-weary Hickok, Robin Weigert (Loggerheads, Angels in America) is superb as the foul-mouthed Calamity Jane, and John Hawkes (The Perfect Storm, Identity) plays the fast-talking Sol Star, Bullock's business partner and lifelong friend. Rounding out the cast is Paula Malcomson (The Green Mile, Tombstone), who plays Trixie, Swearengen's favourite but fed-up whore, Brad Dourif (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the sinister voice of Chucky in Child's Play) is Doc Cochran, and Powers Boothe (Sin City, Men of Honor) is Cy Tolliver, a business rival of Swearengen and the owner of the 'upmarket' Bella Union gambling and prostitution den. Deadwood is action-packed and worthy of its numerous awards; just don't be sworn off by the salty dialogue. From the good, the bad and the ugly, we head to In the Womb (National Geographic Channel on Friday at 10pm), a two-hour special that uses the latest technology to take viewers on an incredible journey through pregnancy. Produced by Pioneer Productions, revolutionary three- and four-dimensional scanning techniques shed new light on the mysterious world of the foetus (the Latin word for offspring). In the Womb uses a combination of real footage and computer-generated imagery to show the foetus behaving in a manner much more complex than previously imagined: the foetus can smile, recognise his or her mother's voice and possibly even dream. In the Womb starts at the beginning; from conception, it takes us through the three trimesters of pregnancy and finishes with the (rather graphic) birth. Interestingly, it reveals a child's personality is determined at conception, as is their susceptibility to diseases such as cancer and schizophrenia. If only they could explain the terrible twos.
