Hell on Wheels ran for five seasons and 57 episodes on AMC, from November 6, 2011 to July 23, 2016. It is a Western about the first transcontinental railroad, and it never quite decided whether it wanted to be a revenge story or a history of the Union Pacific. That split is the whole show in miniature.
Cullen Bohannon Rides West to Find His Wife’s Killers
The series opens in 1865, shortly after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Cullen Bohannon, played by Anson Mount, is a former Confederate soldier. He joins the railroad to track down the Union soldiers who murdered his wife and young son during the Civil War. The synopsis says he sets out to exact revenge on the soldiers who killed his wife; the Wikipedia account adds the son. Either way, the engine of season one is a man hunting names.
In the process he becomes a foreman and eventually chief engineer on the railroad. That is a strange arc, and the show knows it. A killer becomes a builder. The fifth and final season is set in 1869, the year the rails met.
Colm Meaney plays Thomas “Doc” Durant, described in casting notes as a “greedy entrepreneur taking full advantage of the changing times.” Durant is the show’s best idea, and that is this paper’s read, not the source’s. He is not a villain exactly. He is a man doing math.
The Mobile Camp That Followed the Railhead West
The title is a place, not a mood. Hell on Wheels is the mobile encampment that followed the railhead west across the Great Plains. The series chronicles the Union Pacific Railroad and its laborers, mercenaries, prostitutes, surveyors, and others who lived, worked, and died there.
That is a strong premise for television. A town that moves. No fixed sets, no settled law, no cemetery that stays put. In this paper’s view the show gets real mileage out of the transience, and the production — Entertainment One and Nomadic Pictures, developed by Endemol USA under senior vice-president of scripted programming Jeremy Gold — puts bodies and mud on screen.
The problem, as this paper sees it, is that a moving town is a setting, not a story. Hell on Wheels keeps reaching for a spine and keeps finding another subplot.
Common Was the First Actor Cast, in July 2010
Common plays Elam Ferguson, “an emancipated slave who is working to achieve true freedom in a world entrenched in prejudice.”
Common spoke about what the role cost him. “Very challenging. And that’s why I took it on,” he said. “It’s a lot of responsibility because what black people went through in slavery, within that system of slavery, was really treacherous. And for me, I felt like I owed it to the people that lived during that time to bring something truthful to the character.” He also praised how the character was written, saying he was not drawn as a man who was merely oppressed and kept his head down.
That is the most interesting thing anyone associated with Hell on Wheels says about Hell on Wheels. The show’s treatment of race is not decoration. It is the second engine, and when Common is on screen it runs.
Mount, McElligott and the Rest of the Casting Roll Call
Mount plays Cullen Bohannon, “a former soldier hell bent on avenging his wife’s death.” Dominique McElligott plays Lily Bell, “a newly widowed woman trying to survive in a man’s world.” McElligott said she never expected to be cast in a period American role. Her account of how it happened involves drinks in London with friends who were flight attendants.
Ben Esler and Phil Burke play Seán and Mickey McGinnes, “two young brothers looking to find their fortune in the new West.” Eddie Spears plays Joseph Black Moon, “a Native American man torn between his culture and the changing world around him.”
Christopher Heyerdahl plays The Swede, and in this paper’s estimation he is the show’s strangest and most durable creation. Heyerdahl credited “luck and providence” for landing it. “This kind of character is very rare, with the fact that it fit so well with my background and my understanding of a Norwegian man,” he said. He called it “tailor-made.”
The cast churned. Jennifer Ferrin joined as a series regular in season three, playing a New York Sun journalist covering the railroad’s construction. Dohn Norwood became a series regular the same season. Jake Weber joined for season four; he was initially set to play a carpetbagger seeking to profit from the frontier, but the role changed to John Allen Campbell, first governor of Wyoming. MacKenzie Porter replaced Siobhan Williams as Naomi, Bohannon’s Mormon bride.
Two Showrunners and a Show That Changed Hands
In 2012, AMC announced that creators Joe and Tony Gayton were no longer involved in the day-to-day production of the series. On December 12, 2012, AMC announced that writer John Wirth would take over as showrunner for the third season.
That is the hinge, in this paper’s reading. Hell on Wheels lost its authors after two seasons and kept going for three more. Some shows survive that. This one mostly endured it. The later seasons are competent and rarely surprising.
The cast list in the source material also credits Robin McLeavy as Eva, Tim Guinee as Collis Huntington, Angela Zhou as Mei, and Byron Mann as Chang. A show that runs 57 episodes across five years accumulates people. Hell on Wheels accumulated them faster than it developed them.
What the Show Gets Right, and Where It Sags
Here is the case for the show. The premise is genuinely novel: a Western built around infrastructure rather than gunfights, with a protagonist whose skills are engineering and violence in roughly equal measure. The Durant material is sharp. Meaney plays a man who believes the railroad justifies everything he does to build it, and the show lets him be right often enough to be unsettling. The Swede is a real creation, not a stock menace.
Here is the case against. Five seasons is too many for this story. The revenge thread that opens the series gets stretched, buried, and revived until it stops meaning anything. The show keeps introducing characters — journalists, governors, brides, brothers — and then not knowing what to do with them. The fifth season is set in 1869, the year the line was completed, and the finale carries the weight of a premise the middle seasons largely set aside.
The Rotten Tomatoes score sits at 61%, and the published critical score is 6.1/10. That is a fair number for a show with a great first idea and an uneven follow-through. It is not a bad show. It is a show that never became the one it clearly could have been.
Hell on Wheels by the Numbers
- Network: AMC
- Run: November 6, 2011 – July 23, 2016
- Seasons: 5
- Episodes: 57
- Created by: Tony Gayton and Joe Gayton
- Showrunner from season 3: John Wirth
- Timeframe: 1865 (season 1) to 1869 (season 5)
- Rotten Tomatoes: 61%
- Score: 6.1/10
What This Paper Makes of Hell on Wheels
This paper would put the show in the middle of the pack, and that is a judgment call, not a measured placement.
- The Durant material — Colm Meaney gives the show a center of gravity it otherwise lacks.
- The first season’s revenge structure — clean, propulsive, and the best use of Anson Mount.
- Common’s Elam Ferguson — in this paper’s view the show’s most serious thread and its best performance.
- The Swede — a genuinely odd creation.
- The middle seasons — competent, meandering, and too long.
- The fifth season — a rushed landing for a premise that deserved a tighter runway.
In this paper’s view the showrunner change is the detail that matters most. Hell on Wheels was built by the Gaytons and then handed to John Wirth, and you can feel the seam. The show that opens in 1865 with a man hunting his wife’s killers is not quite the show that closes in 1869. It kept the cast, the setting, and the title, and lost the through-line.
What is worth watching is the first two seasons and anything with Durant. What is noise is most of the middle. A moving town, this paper concludes, is easier to build than to keep moving.
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