20 More TV Acting Performances That Are Totally Flawless

There's no single character in David Milch's gritty Western who is as iconic, complex and lived-in as Ian McShane's vicious businessman Al Swearengen.

Deadwood has a host of memorable characters (including Timothy Olyphant's sheriff and protagonist Seth Bullock), but Swearengen is of a whole different breed of man. An arrogant, cruel, power-mad criminal and the most influential figure in the show's titular settlement, he's as quick to murder his enemies as he is to let loose with a magnificently profane monologue.

Despite his distasteful evilness and general unlikability, though, McShane does a remarkable thing, and refuses to play Swearengen as your typical sociopathic villain. Instead, he finds a way to make him flawed and vulnerable, revealing a possibly decent human somewhere under his grimy surface, and makes watching him a constantly intriguing, unpredictable rollercoaster of emotions.

McShane delivers Milch's exquisitely written monologues with the energy and passion of a classically trained Thespian, and also crafts out of his performance a TV villain for the ages. Swearengen is impossible to love, impossible to fully understand, and frankly impossible to look away from all the same.