Sundays may have been lacking lately with "Halt and Catch Fire," but the period drama just opened its fourth season slightly improved on Saturday night.

AMC saw some very good news over the weekend. No, it wasn't freshman Halt and Catch Fire wrapping with a mere 574,000 viewers. It was on Saturday night.

The fourth season of Hell on Wheels outperformed last summer's opener, averaging 3.6 million viewers in live-plus-3 ratings. Of that haul, a solid 2.4 million of them tuned in live (or on Saturday night) before DVR gave the show a 48 percent boost.

That live-plus-3 total also marks a 5 percent improvement from last summer's first episode back for the western.

Saturday might not be the most glamorous on the schedule, but Hell on Wheels has proven to be a workhorse on that night since shifting there in its second season. And that's the kind of performer AMC needs while it waits for behemoth The Walking Dead to return to the schedule in October.