Hell on Wheels trailer comes online

While its longetivity can't match HBO, AMC's talents in creating original dramas has been nothing less than staggering.  Even though their first two series, The Lot and Remember WENN, are long since forgotten, the recent success of Mad Men, Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead has made AMC one of the top cable channels.  Now, on the heels of The Killing, comes the next original series from the network: Hell on Wheels.

It's been a few years since Deadwood ended its three year run on HBO and for the most part, American TV has been void of the good ole fashioned western since then.  Before the year is out, that void will be filled.  Hell on Wheels is about the construction of the Trainscontinental railroad as well as the reconstruction of the United States after the Civil War.  Anson Mount, perhaps best known as Britney Spear's love interest in Crossroads, will play Cullen Bohannon, a Confederate soldier who's wife was raped and murdered by Union soldiers.  So we got that hanging over our heads.  And guess what?  Common is on this show, no doubt to portray the flames of racial hatred that would still exist in the aftermath of the War Between Brothers.

Hell on Wheels is on schedule for a ten episode season sometime later this year.  It has a tremendous pedigree to live up to, given the critical success of the network's other dramas.  But judging from the trailer, it has the potential to live up to it.