‘Hell on Wheels’ off to a great start

With the post-Civil War themed “Hell on Wheels,” AMC has taken the basic storyline behind ABC’s somewhat ridiculous show “Revenge” and made it acceptable.

Not only is it acceptable. It’s brilliant.

Anson Mount stars as Cullen Bohannon, a Confederate soldier motivated to his core by the rape and murder of his wife at the hands of Union soldiers at Meridian.

He’s tracking down the men responsible. He’s going to see them dead.

This instantly seems more satisfying than an improbably wealthy girl whose father was ruined by his business associates so she’s going to run about the Hamptons playing out a revenge fantasy Quentin Tarantino considered and then rejected as being far too pointless.

He treks out West to the end of the railroad, to the mobile town of Hell on Wheels that supplies the needs, wants, wishes and vices of the railroad builders, driven at the behest of free money from the government being squirreled away by robber baron Thomas “Doc” Durant.

Durant, played with ecstatic corruption by Colm Meaney, has an underling murdered for making his railroad too straight. Durant has a lock on the limitless teat of the federal government and he intends to milk it as dry as he may, and toward that end, he needs for the railroad to twist and turn -- perhaps to mirror the sorts of twists and turns already developing in this production.

For example, the surveyor in charge of mapping the rails into the mountains has been killed by members of the Cheyenne Tribe, complete with disturbingly evocative face paint and the simmering rage of a people displaced.

I understand from other reviews we’re going to get into the culture some, and those reviewers scoff at the presentation of tribal life, as though the American Indians presented in the show were merely decorative to the landscape of the “real” story of the piece, rather than nations unto themselves dependent upon it for their survival.

But like HBO’s “Carnivale” before it, “Hell on Wheels” isn’t merely about the first man we meet. Sure, Bohannon’s got one compelling tale to explore, along with former slave Elam, played by rap artist Common, and the men with whom his history interweaves -- like his new boss, Daniel Johnson, played by Ted Levine.

But it’s a mistake to assume that because the camera is trained on Bohannon, that his is the only story being told. This series opens with a few violent deaths and Bohannon’s rage is not responsible for all of them. One might argue karma is responsible for Johnson’s death, say, while the surveyor’s death arose from the Cheyenne trying to protect their homes and food supply from the first waves of encroaching expansionists.

But as Durant’s context-free soliloquy closing the series opener points out, he’s the villain of the piece because history will insist upon it. He is a lion, he said -- one of the lions who drive the events of history, which is then written by zebras for zebras. When history recalls him in 100 years as the villain of the piece, he said, it will have been riding his rails for a century.

This ambitious pilot episode had a very full and intricate world to create. This band of characters drifting westward with the rails is necessarily introduced as a sketch, with sketchy people motivated by vengeance, pain and a will to be free. As we learn more about their families, their histories, their cultures and their lives, I think the groundwork has been laid in for some power storytelling.

“Hell on Wheels” airs new episodes Sundays at 9 p.m. on AMC. It carries an MA rating for graphic violence. Also, some language may not be suitable for all audiences.