The photo above is found in tomorrow's edition of the Washington Post with a story headlined "'Deadwood': HBO Opens a Harsh New Frontier." The story covers the new HBO series about Deadwood, South Dakota back in the days of Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane, which premieres tomorrow night. Excerpt:

["Deadwood" creator David] Milch's raw, revisionist western, with muddier streets and grubbier lowlifes than most of its like-minded predecessors, is more than a shockfest of violence and profanity, though one is tempted to saddle it with an alternate title like "The Sopranoats" or "Rauncho Grande." It's a grim, evocative look at some of this country's ruggedest but most disreputable roots -- a meticulously detailed portrait of a time, place and people that makes even today, with its punishing headlines about suicide bombs and other terrorist atrocities, seem almost safe and sane.

Tomorrow's edition of the New York Times Magazine also has a piece about the new HBO show, headlined "True West." Excerpt:

The latest attempt to resurrect the western by making it darker, stranger and, perversely, more contemporary, is HBO's new series ''Deadwood,'' which tries to do for frontier dramas what ''The Sopranos'' has done for gangster stories. Set in the mid-1870's in a bloody Dakota Terrritory settlement where prospectors rush to claw the gold from sacred lands belonging to the Sioux, ''Deadwood'' is relentlessly obscene, overwhelmingly pessimistic and meticulously depraved. It's the brainy, complex feel-bad series of the year, and every year needs one, at least on cable TV. Its good guys are bad, its bad guys are good and its medium guys are both and neither.

Like most examples of the New Western, ''Deadwood'' wants to be both realistic and allegorical. First, its realism. The show includes unvarnished portraits of historical figures like the legendary gunfighters Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane. It presents the old West as a creepy-crawly human sewer, wholly unworthy of nostalgia. In one scene, a corpse clad only in soiled long johns is dumped over a fence and eaten by hogs -- to no particular outcry from anyone. The girls at the local house of ill repute are rarely shown without copious cuts and bruises given to them by their drunken, moronic patrons. Just about every business transaction is crooked and every noble utterance a lie. The ongoing slaughter of humans and animals amounts to little but background noise. And addiction, real pathological addiction, is everywhere -- to dope, to sex, to gambling and most of all, to money, money, money.

You can read more about the new series HERE and HERE.