‘Wheels’ rolls along

McClatchy Newspapers

Despite good numbers for its first season, “Hell on Wheels” never caught a buzz, and there’s a reason for that: It can be surprisingly listless. The series bumbles around in the dark (real and figurative), seeking some larger meaning that always seems to elude its grasp. It’s moody, bleak and dour, and you begin to wonder if there’s any “there” there out on those windswept plains.

Its second-season premiere is at 9 p.m. Sunday on AMC.

In Sunday’s episode, the transcontinental railroad continues to push farther west. But progress has slowed. Indians remain a threat, and suddenly there’s a new one — Cullen Bohannon (Anson Mount), who has taken up with a band of desperadoes intent on robbing every train that rolls by with the railroad workers’ payroll onboard. Bohannon is on the run after killing an innocent man (in the first-season finale) whom he believed had killed his wife.

The cast — Common, Colm Meaney, Christopher Heyerdahl and Mount — is good, while the Old West still feels especially beautiful and perilous.