TV Show Westerns - What are your favorites/least favorites and why?

The Lone Ranger is my favorite. Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels were the greatest. Plus, Jay was in The Brady Bunch episode when they went to the Grand Canyon.

 

Bat Masterson
Have Gun Will Travel
Lawman

 

Yancy Derringer
Wanted Dead or Alive
Have Gun Will Travel
Cheyenne
Kung Fu

 

Been watching a lot of the Restless Gun. It debuted on Sept. 23 1957 and ran until Sept. 14 1959. It has a complete series (78 episodes) release on DVD, for about 45 cents an episode it's well worth the price of admission! It's from the same team that brought us Bonanza. Very well done, it follows a gunfighter that would rather figure out another solutions besides gun play. Like Bonanza there are serious episodes and comedies, and everything inbetween.

"Based on a radio teleplay starring James Stewart Restless Gun follows the exploits of Vint Bonner (John Payne) a retired gunfighter and restless drifter who wanders the Southwest in search of adventure.- Preferring to find peaceful resolutions to the problems he faced Bonner was often given no choice but to fight and his proficiency with a gun made him a fearsome opponent to those who dared cross him.- Bonner carried around a special kit that would extend the rang of his gun this involved extensive assembly and became a novelty for the show and inspired Westerns that followed."



The Restless Gun: The Complete Series - 78 episodes for $34



Here is the the first time Jimmy Stewart played the Six Shooter character on Radio with an intro by me

The Six Shooter Podcast - Hollywood Star Playhouse 1952-04-13 Jimmy Stewart in The Six Shooter (First Appearance)

 

Firefly should get an honorable mention.

 

I was actually considering starting a thread on this subject. I'll probably be adding to it in the future, but for now I'll just jot down a few thoughts.

I'm too young to have seen the TV westerns in their golden age of the late '50s and early '60s. Still it became my favorite genre anyway. As a kid I pretty much only saw the big rerun hits (Bonanza, color Gunsmoke, The Virginian, sometimes The Big Valley). In the mid '80s Pat Robertson's CBN channel showed the classic westerns on weekend afternoons, and this was generally my first exposure to shows like Maverick, Wagon Train, Rawhide, and Have Gun Will Travel. In the '90s TVLand did something similar with Maverick and Alias Smith & Jones -- they even showed a few Nichols episodes.

Over the last couple of years I've watched a lot of Wagon Train, The Virginian, and Rawhide episodes. Right now I'm in the middle of Gunsmoke's third season. For someone who knew it only from the color years, these early episodes have been something of a revelation. But more about that in the days ahead.

 

Baby boomers and classic TV fans will get a huge kick out of this clip:

 

This makes about as much sense as me avoiding The Untouchables because I've never been to Chicago

(And yes, I love The Untouchables)

 

Premiering about a year after The Twilight Zone left the air, The Loner was one of several "existentialist drifter" series (Run For Your Life, A Man Called Shenandoah, Branded) to debut in 1965, all inspired by the success of The Fugitive.

The pilot's script gets a bit too much on a soapbox -- in fact Billy Graham might find it too preachy -- but it does show an admirable emphasis on character. With its theme of being haunted by the past, the episode is reminiscent of Twilight Zone classics like "In Praise Of Pip" and "Walking Distance". I'll have to give a listen to your podcast on the pilot (I'm also a huge Benny fan, BTW)

But the Loner I really want to see features guest star -- I swear I'm not making this up -- Allan Sherman!!



Apparently Serling was a Sherman fan and wrote an episode for him. But unfortunately it's not currently in circulation. So fans of Sherm on the range will have to settle for this:

 

"The Virginian" is, hands down, my favorite Western series. Many of the early 90-minute episodes really are like movies (albeit television-quality movies) in terms of the production quality, actors and pacing. I have only purchased Season One on DVD, as the full-season sets are still fairly pricey, but I am looking forward to getting more.

The "Lonesome Dove" miniseries looks very good (but, predictably, not spectacular) on BluRay, and is definitely worth getting. Although the picture has been cropped at the top and bottom, with some added content on the sides, for widescreen viewing, this is one instance where that sort of cropping works quite well from an artistic standpoint. It's almost as if the series was shot with widescreen viewing in mind.

 

Sorry you can't relate. It makes sense to me, and I consider myself reasonably intelligent. But we'll leave it at you don't understand.

Harry

 

From the early days of television with The Cisco Kid, The Lone Ranger, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, and Hopalong Cassidy (my first school lunchbox was a Hopalong. Who's even heard of him today?), to the dozens of westerns in the mid-fifties, it was a phenomenon. From the well-remembered (Tombstone Territory, Have Gun, Maverick, Gunsmoke, etc.) to the more obscure (Kit Carson, Jim Bowie), every kid I knew had the Mattel Fanner Fifty, or some such western gun/holster set.

Then they were gone. Apparently they can't be revived. Not sure why. I know this isn't the subject exactly, but the complete disappearance of such a popular entertainment is somewhat a mystery.

 

Same here...my two favorites and I'll throw another nod to "Lonesome Dove."
Regarding "Branded", we have one TV in the house, and wasn't "The Monkees" on at the same time? There was some reason, we didn't watch it.

 

There was an episode, where Lucas woke up, with a rattlesnake in his sleeping bag. Scared the living hell out of me.

 

As a kid, (aged 5 - 8), I was NEVER without a cap pistol and a holster, I loved "cowboy shows".
Faves in no particular order:
Wild Wild West
Big Valley
Rifleman
Branded
Lawman
Least faves, but still watched:
Cisco Kid
Lone Ranger
My Friend Flicka

Oh, does Spin & Marty from the Mickey Mouse Club count? Loved it, was so envious of their cowboy hats!

 

A number of reasons, overexposure being one and another being the sociology of increased urbanization and rural life no longer being as idyllized (and a related reason, advertisers wanting urban-oriented shows to buy time on; read about "The Rural Massacre" of 1971 for more details).

There are also other reasons involving various aspects of political correctness. But since this forum frowns so intently on political discussions, I won't go into them.

 

wat

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_purge

 

Uh, I can still hear the Tombstone Territory theme in my head. Doesn't anybody fondly remember that show?

 

Kung Fu for me as well. I loved that show on first run, and when I got the DVD series it was even better than I had remembered it.

Another show I really enjoyed at the time, and haven't seen mentioned here : The Guns of Will Sonnett. "No brag, just fact."

 

Around 1960, at age 5, I used to watch a lot of westerns, and I took a liking to actors Ty Hardin and Clint Eastwood more than any particular show, for whatever reason.

 

It's a fascinating topic, why Westerns bit the dust on American TV. There have been many attempts to bring them back in some form -- even some successful ones, like Hell on Wheels and Deadwood -- but for the most part, I think mass audiences and programming execs don't think they work today. I think good shows work in all formats, but you need very good, smart people to pull them off.

Network Soap Operas and Daytime Game Shows are also kind of an endangered species... although syndicated shows like Family Feud and Wheel of Fortune are still extremely successful today. While I'm generally not a fan, I prefer those to so-called reality shows.

 

My two favorites now is Longmire and Justified

 

Never understood the advantage of a sawed off rifle, Mare's Laig 44.40 0n Wanted: Dead or Alive? I mean you use a rifle to shoot straighter and farther, but you defeat that purpose when you saw it off. Now, Wyatt Earp's long barreled pistol made sense to shoot more accurately at a further distance.



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