Unlike muffin munro, I don't look to TV for history lessons or historical accuracy. I look for entertainment and new spins on the hackneyed, which Strange Empire delivers. Westerns are generally cheesy glorifications of a violent time in North American history. The ten or so years it took for settlers to migrate from the east to the west coast gave free-reign to greed and brutality.
In SE, the women of Janestown continually redefine their alliances as they cope with the brutality of the man who killed their husbands in order to strand them as whores for a mining community. All the old male western stereotypes--marshal, miner, cowboy, doctor, bounty hunter, etc.--are trotted out at their creepy worst. And the women, despite beauty, money, intelligence and deadly aim, are flawed and periodically reduced to some form of prostitution by brute strength. No shiny heroes here, but enough tension and drama to make occasionally awkward syntax forgivable.
