Hell On Wheels Preview: Common's Character Elam Sets His Boundaries

In less than a week, AMC will premiere their new series Hell on Wheels. We have a clip from the premiere episode, which does a nice job of illustrating the times the characters were living in.

Hell on Wheels is a drama/western that takes place just after the Civil War in America. The series focuses on Anson Mount’s character, a former confederate soldier, who’s on a mission for revenge against the Union soldier who killed his wife. He ends up heading west and getting involved with the people working on construction of the first transcontinental railroad.

In the clip below, Common’s character Elam sets his boundaries...

The above clip shows off one of the things I’m most interested to see in this series. In terms of the setting for the show, the Civil war is over and Emancipation Proclamation is in effect, allowing many slaves to leave their owners and pursue their own futures as free men and women. That’s obviously a lot easier said than done, however, and it should be interesting to see how the African American characters in this series are portrayed and how their own attempts to find work and a life for themselves fits in to the over-all story.

Hell on Wheels premieres on Sunday, November 6th at 10/9c on AMC.

Kelly West
Assistant Managing Editor

Kelly joined CinemaBlend as a freelance TV news writer in 2006 and went on to serve as the site’s TV Editor before moving over to other roles on the site. At present, she’s an Assistant Managing Editor who spends much of her time brainstorming and editing feature content on the site. She an expert in all things Harry Potter, books from a variety of genres (sci-fi, mystery, horror, YA, drama, romance -- anything with a great story and interesting characters.), watching Big Brother, frequently rewatching The Office, listening to Taylor Swift, and playing The Sims.