How the West was lost by television is a mystery, but the latest series, Deadwood, is expected to do little to restore its popularity.

That whirring sound you can hear is the entire cowboy population of Boot Hill Cemetery spinning in their graves. They've just seen the latest American TV western import, Deadwood, a series that will do nothing to revive viewers' interest in the wild Wild West.

You soon realise that you're a long way from Hopalong Cassidy or The Cisco Kid when, within a few minutes of Deadwood's opening episode, Calamity Jane has called someone a phrase involving both the f-word and the c-word that I can't repeat here. Every other word of dialogue begins with those letters, which will be offensive to those who believe there's too much swearing on TV and distracting to anyone expecting an old-style western.

The truth is that Deadwood is no more a traditional western than Casualty. The creator, executive producer and head writer David Milch, who co-created Emmy award-winning police drama NYPD Blues, has put a gritty, realistic modern law and disorder series on horseback and in the bars and brothels of the Old West. The profanity is permitted as the series is being shown on cable channel HBO rather than the networks that don't permit such language.

Milch denies he wanted to make a docu-drama about the wildest town in the West. "I want to make it clear that I've had my ass bored off by many things that are historically accurate," he says.

Deadwood provided the perfect setting for what he wanted to do because, by a quirk of fate, the town wasn't subject to American law. It was a literally lawless community where gold was plentiful, 90 per cent of women were prostitutes and the town averaged a murder a day.

Many of Milch's characters are based on real people - saloon and brothel owner Al Swearingen (Ian McShane in a role far removed from antiques rogue Lovejoy); gambler and showman Wild Bill Hickok; and lawman turned hardware salesman Seth Bullock. And we mustn't forget Calamity Jane, not only a brawler and boozer but "one of the most foul-mouthed frontierspeople of either sex". Doris Day, she ain't.

Their daily scheduling takes in shooting, drinking, gambling, gunfighting and swearing. Corpses are disposed of by feeding them to the pigs who, quite frankly, are better behaved and swear less than the humans.

Deadwood collected 11 Emmy nominations in its first season on American TV. I doubt that viewers over here will take to it.

Within minutes of the opening credits, you can tell that this isn't the series to revive the western. Just as cowboy adventures have fallen out of favour with cinema audiences, so the genre that was one of TV's most popular in the 1950s and 1960s has all but disappeared. Recent attempts by film-makers to bring back the western have not been successful. Kevin Costner's Open Range and The Missing with Cate Blanchett were not big cinema hits, while big budget flop The Alamo helped contribute to the Disney studio's current bad spell.

How the West was lost by TV is a mystery. Perhaps it was just overtaken by police and medical series that were cheaper to produce as they didn't demand expensive location filming or large numbers of extras for action scenes.

TV's early days were dominated by cowboys as the small screen emulated the games of cowboys and Indians that children used to play. The likes of Hopalong Cassidy, the Cisco Kid and the Lone Ranger were essentially good guys, a sort of Robin Hood on horses.

They were acceptable in the days before Indians became Native Americans and the truth was told about the disgraceful treatment of these people by the invaders of their land. It was no longer PC to cast them as the villains. Jay Silverheels, who was Tonto in TV's The Lone Ranger, was a real Mohawk Indian who later spoke out about the humbling way Indians had always been portrayed on TV.

Robbed of the bad guys, the western was up the proverbial creek without a paddle. There were only so many evil cattle barons, devious gunslingers and nasty bounty hunters that could be used against the good cowboys.

The old series may have been fabrications but that doesn't stop you looking back with affection to those innocent days when a cowboy's four-legged friend was a horse called Trigger or Diablo and he could ride alongside his best friend, Pancho or Tonto, without people spreading rumours about his sexuality.

Early TV cowboys, such as The Cisco Kid and Hopalong Cassidy, moved from the big to the small screen. The Lone Ranger rode in from radio. They were all aimed at a younger audience.

Eventually, the western grew up. Gunsmoke lasted longer than most with James Arness maintaining law and order in Dodge City for more than 20 years as Marshall Matt Dillon.

In the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s there were more than 100 TV western series on screen - Maverick, Wagon Train, Have Gun Will Travel, Bonanza, High Chaparral, Rawhide, Cheyenne and Wyatt Earp to name but a holsterful. The Virginian, based on a turn-of-the-century book already filmed three times, was TV's first feature-length western series.

Some western actors went on to become movie stars. Clint Eastwood's big break was as Rowdy Yates in "head 'em up, move 'em out" series Rawhide. Before Bullitt and The Great Escape, Steve McQueen starred as a bounty hunter in Wanted: Dead Or Alive. Michael Landon, the youngest Cartwright brother in Bonanza, moved up the road into The Little House On The Prairie.

Most recently, Jane Seymour brought a feminine touch to the West as Dr Quinn: Medicine Woman and The Magnificent Seven were briefly reincarnated as a TV series. Now the West is lost. Sadly for cowboy fans, if you want to know what happened to TV western series, the answer is: "They went thataway" and have disappeared into the sunset.

* Deadwood premieres on Sky One on Tuesday at 10pm.

Published: 18/09/2004