Television Westerns
Encyclopedia
Television Westerns are a sub-genre of the Western
, a genre of film, fiction, drama, television program
ming, etc., in which stories are set primarily in the later half of the 19th century in the American Old West
, Western Canada
and Mexico
during the period from about 1860 to the end of the so-called "Indian Wars
."
When television became popular in the late 1940s and 1950s, TV westerns quickly became an audience favorite. The peak year for television westerns was 1959, with 26 such shows airing during prime-time. Traditional Westerns faded in popularity in the late 1960s, while new shows fused Western elements with other types of shows, such as family drama, mystery thrillers, and crime drama. In the 1990s and 2000s, hour-long westerns and slickly packaged made-for-TV movie westerns were introduced. As well, new elements were once again added to the Western formula, such as the Western-science fiction
show Firefly
, created by Joss Whedon
in 2002.
phenomenon in the US which often featured western series. Film westerns turned Audie Murphy
, Tom Mix
, and Johnny Mack Brown
into major idols of a young audience, plus "Singing cowboy
s" such as Gene Autry
, Roy Rogers
and Dale Evans
, Rex Allen
. Each cowboy had a co-starring horse such as Rogers' Golden Palomino, Trigger
, who became a star in his own right.
Other B-movie
series were Lash La Rue
and the Durango Kid. Herbert Jeffreys
, as Bob Blake with his horse Stardust, appeared in a number of movies made for African American
audiences in the days of segregated
movie theaters. http://www.cowboydirectory.com/J/J-ea.html. Bill Pickett
, an African American rodeo
performer, also appeared in early western films for the same audience http://www.famoustexans.com/billpickett.htm.
show, at first edited from the 66 films
made by William Boyd
. Many B-movie Westerns were aired on TV as time fillers, while a number of long-running TV Westerns became classics in their own right. Notable TV Westerns include Gunsmoke
, The Lone Ranger
, The Rifleman
, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Have Gun, Will Travel, Bonanza
, The Virginian
, Wagon Train
, The Big Valley
, Maverick, The High Chaparral
, The Gene Autry Show
, Sugarfoot
, Cheyenne
, and many others.
The peak year for television westerns was 1959, with 26 such shows airing during prime-time. In one week in March 1959, eight of the top ten shows were westerns. Increasing costs of production (a horse cost up to $100 a day) led to most action half hour series vanishing in the early 1960s to be replaced by hour long television shows, increasingly in color. Two unusual westerns series of this era are Zorro set in early California
under Spanish rule and the British/Australian western Whiplash
set in 1850/60's Australia with four scripts by Gene Roddenberry
.
became ubiquitous. 1968 was the last season any new traditional Westerns debuted on television; by 1969, after pressure from parental advocacy groups who claimed Westerns were too violent for television, all three of the major networks ceased airing new Western series. The two last traditional Westerns, Bonanza and Gunsmoke, ended their runs in 1973 and 1975 respectively. This may have been the result of an ongoing trend toward more urban-oriented programming that occurred in the early 1970s known as the "rural purge
," though only two Westerns (NBC's The Virginian
and The High Chaparral
) was canceled in the peak season of the purge in 1971. This period saw a revision of the western, with the incorporation of many new elements. The Wild Wild West
, which ran from 1965 to 1969, combined Westerns with heavy use of steampunk
and an espionage-thriller format in the spirit of the recently popularized James Bond
franchise. McCloud, which premiered in 1970
, was essentially a fusion of the sheriff-oriented western with the modern big-city crime drama. Hec Ramsey
was a western who-dunnit mystery series. Little House on the Prairie
was set on the frontier in the time period of the western, but was essentially a family drama. Kung Fu
was in the tradition of the itinerant gunfighter westerns, but the main character was a Shaolin monk
, the son of an American father and a Chinese mother, who fought only with his formidable martial art skill. The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams was a family adventure show about a gentle mountain man with an uncanny connection to wildlife who helps others who visit his wilderness refuge.
Little House on the Prairie
was an American one-hour dramatic television program that aired on the NBC network from September 11, 1974 to March 21, 1983. During the 1982-83 television season, with the departure of Michael Landon, the series was broadcast with the new title Little House: A New Beginning. A miniseries called The Little House Years was aired in 1979.
The Young Riders
premiered in the fall of 1989 and ran for 3 seasons. The show followed a group of riders for the fabled Pony Express which operated 1860-1861.
starring Sam Elliott
and Katharine Ross
, Tony Hillerman's The Dark Wind
, The Last Outlaw
, The Jack Bull
etc. A few new comedies like The Cisco Kid
, The Cherokee Kid
, and the gritty TV series Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years.
Zorro
was remade with Duncan Regehr
for The Family Channel filmed in Madrid, Spain.
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
was multi-Emmy Award winning western/dramatic television series in the United States, created by Beth Sullivan. It ran on CBS for six seasons, from January 1, 1993 to May 16, 1998.
Walker, Texas Ranger
was a long-running western/crime drama series, set in the modern era, in the United States, that starred and later was produced by Chuck Norris
. It ran on CBS for nine seasons, from April 21, 1993 to May 19, 2001. For most of their time on air, Dr. Quinn and Walker aired on the same Saturday night lineup.
In the 1993-1994 season, the Fox network aired a science fiction
western called The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
, which lasted for only 27 episodes. In the fall of 1995, the UPN
network aired its own science fiction western, Legend
, which ended after 12 episodes.
Western TV shows from the 2000s included the syndicated Queen of Swords filmed in Almeria
Spain, Louis L'Amour
's Crossfire Trail
starring Tom Selleck
, Monte Walsh
, and Hillerman's Coyote Waits
, and A Thief of Time
. DVDs offer a second life to TV series like Peacemakers
, and HBO's Deadwood
. In 2002, a show called Firefly
(created by Joss Whedon
) mixed the Western genre with science fiction
. Justified
is a series on FX that debuted in 2010, about a Western-style vigilante U.S. Marshal based in modern rural Kentucky.
With the growth of cable television
and direct broadcast satellite
s, rerun
s of Westerns have become more common. Upon its launch in 1996, TV Land
carried a block of Westerns on Sundays; the network still airs Bonanza and the color episodes of Gunsmoke as of 2011. Encore Westerns, part of the Encore slate of premium channels, airs blocks of Western series in the morning and in the afternoon, while the channel airs Western films the rest of the day. MeTV
, a digital broadcast channel, includes Westerns in its regular schedule as well.
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
, a genre of film, fiction, drama, television program
Television program
A television program , also called television show, is a segment of content which is intended to be broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series...
ming, etc., in which stories are set primarily in the later half of the 19th century in the American Old West
American Old West
The American Old West, or the Wild West, comprises the history, geography, people, lore, and cultural expression of life in the Western United States, most often referring to the latter half of the 19th century, between the American Civil War and the end of the century...
, Western Canada
Western Canada
Western Canada, also referred to as the Western provinces and commonly as the West, is a region of Canada that includes the four provinces west of the province of Ontario.- Provinces :...
and Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
during the period from about 1860 to the end of the so-called "Indian Wars
Indian Wars
American Indian Wars is the name used in the United States to describe a series of conflicts between American settlers or the federal government and the native peoples of North America before and after the American Revolutionary War. The wars resulted from the arrival of European colonizers who...
."
When television became popular in the late 1940s and 1950s, TV westerns quickly became an audience favorite. The peak year for television westerns was 1959, with 26 such shows airing during prime-time. Traditional Westerns faded in popularity in the late 1960s, while new shows fused Western elements with other types of shows, such as family drama, mystery thrillers, and crime drama. In the 1990s and 2000s, hour-long westerns and slickly packaged made-for-TV movie westerns were introduced. As well, new elements were once again added to the Western formula, such as the Western-science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
show Firefly
Firefly (TV series)
Firefly is an American space western television series created by writer and director Joss Whedon, under his Mutant Enemy Productions label. Whedon served as executive producer, along with Tim Minear....
, created by Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon
Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures...
in 2002.
Radio and film antecendents
The Saturday Afternoon Matinee on the radio were a pre-TVTelevision
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
phenomenon in the US which often featured western series. Film westerns turned Audie Murphy
Audie Murphy
Audie Leon Murphy was a highly decorated and famous soldier. Through LIFE magazine's July 16, 1945 issue , he became one the most famous soldiers of World War II and widely regarded as the most decorated American soldier of the war...
, Tom Mix
Tom Mix
Thomas Edwin "Tom" Mix was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies. He made a reported 336 films between 1910 and 1935, all but nine of which were silent features...
, and Johnny Mack Brown
Johnny Mack Brown
Johnny Mack Brown was an All-American college football player and film actor originally billed as John Mack Brown at the height of his screen career.-Early life:...
into major idols of a young audience, plus "Singing cowboy
Singing cowboy
A singing cowboy was a subtype of the archetypal cowboy hero of early Western films, popularized by many of the B-movies of the 1930s and 1940s...
s" such as Gene Autry
Gene Autry
Orvon Grover Autry , better known as Gene Autry, was an American performer who gained fame as The Singing Cowboy on the radio, in movies and on television for more than three decades beginning in the 1930s...
, Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers
Roy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye , was an American singer and cowboy actor, one of the most heavily marketed and merchandised stars of his era, as well as being the namesake of the Roy Rogers Restaurants franchised chain...
and Dale Evans
Dale Evans
Dale Evans, was an American writer, movie star, and singer-songwriter. She was the third wife of singing cowboy Roy Rogers.-Early life:...
, Rex Allen
Rex Allen
Rex Elvie Allen was an American film actor, singer and songwriter, known as the Arizona Cowboy, particularly known as the narrator in many Disney nature and Western film productions. For contributions to the recording industry, Allen was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.-Family...
. Each cowboy had a co-starring horse such as Rogers' Golden Palomino, Trigger
Trigger (horse)
Trigger was a palomino horse, made famous in American Western films with his owner/rider, cowboy star Roy Rogers.-Pedigree:...
, who became a star in his own right.
Other B-movie
B-movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
series were Lash La Rue
Lash La Rue
Alfred "Lash" LaRue was a popular western motion picture star of the 1940s and 1950s. He had exceptional skill with the bull whip, and taught Harrison Ford how to use a bullwhip in the Indiana Jones movies...
and the Durango Kid. Herbert Jeffreys
Herbert Jeffreys
Herbert "Herb" Jeffries is an American jazz and popular singer and actor.-Early life:Born in Detroit, Michigan as Herbert Jeffrey, he is the son of Umberto Balentino, a pianist of African-American and Sicilian descent and his wife, Mildred, who was of Irish descent.-Career:A jazz and popular...
, as Bob Blake with his horse Stardust, appeared in a number of movies made for African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
audiences in the days of segregated
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
movie theaters. http://www.cowboydirectory.com/J/J-ea.html. Bill Pickett
Bill Pickett
Willie M. "Bill" Pickett was a cowboy and rodeo performer.Pickett was born in the Jenks-Branch community of Travis County, Texas. He was the second of 13 children born to Thomas Jefferson Pickett, a former slave, and Mary "Janie" Gilbert. Pickett had 4 brothers and 8 sisters...
, an African American rodeo
Rodeo
Rodeo is a competitive sport which arose out of the working practices of cattle herding in Spain, Mexico, and later the United States, Canada, South America and Australia. It was based on the skills required of the working vaqueros and later, cowboys, in what today is the western United States,...
performer, also appeared in early western films for the same audience http://www.famoustexans.com/billpickett.htm.
1940s and 1950s
When the popularity of television exploded in the late 1940s and 1950s, westerns quickly became a staple of small-screen entertainment. The first, on June 24, 1949, was the Hopalong CassidyHopalong Cassidy
Hopalong Cassidy is a fictional cowboy hero created in 1904 by the author Clarence E. Mulford, who wrote a series of popular short stories and twenty-eight novels based on the character....
show, at first edited from the 66 films
Hopalong Cassidy films
This is a chronological filmography of all films featuring the character Hopalong Cassidy, always played by actor William Boyd, annotated with film producer / film distributor.Harry Sherman / Paramount Pictures...
made by William Boyd
William Boyd (actor)
William Lawrence Boyd was an American film actor best known for portraying Hopalong Cassidy.-Biography:...
. Many B-movie Westerns were aired on TV as time fillers, while a number of long-running TV Westerns became classics in their own right. Notable TV Westerns include Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke
Gunsmoke is an American radio and television Western drama series created by director Norman MacDonnell and writer John Meston. The stories take place in and around Dodge City, Kansas, during the settlement of the American West....
, The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger
The Lone Ranger is a fictional masked Texas Ranger who, with his Native American companion Tonto, fights injustice in the American Old West. The character has become an enduring icon of American culture....
, The Rifleman
The Rifleman
The Rifleman is an American Western television program that starred Chuck Connors as homesteader Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son, Mark McCain. It was set in the 1880s in the town of North Fork, New Mexico Territory. The show, filmed in black-and-white with a half hour running time, ran...
, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Have Gun, Will Travel, Bonanza
Bonanza
Bonanza is an American western television series that both ran on and was a production of NBC from September 12, 1959 to January 16, 1973. Lasting 14 seasons and 430 episodes, it ranks as the second longest running western series and still continues to air in syndication. It centers on the...
, The Virginian
The Virginian (TV series)
The Virginian is an American Western television series starring James Drury and Doug McClure, which aired on NBC from 1962 to 1971 for a total of 249 episodes. Filmed in color, The Virginian became television's first 90-minute western series...
, Wagon Train
Wagon Train
Wagon Train is an American Western series that ran on NBC from 1957–62 and then on ABC from 1962–65...
, The Big Valley
The Big Valley
The Big Valley is an American television Western which ran on ABC from September 15, 1965, to May 19, 1969, which starred Barbara Stanwyck, as a California widowed mother. It was created by A.I. Bezzerides and Louis F. Edelman...
, Maverick, The High Chaparral
The High Chaparral
The High Chaparral is a Western-themed television series starring Leif Erickson and Cameron Mitchell which aired on NBC from 1967 to 1971. The show was created by David Dortort, who had previously created the hit Bonanza for the network...
, The Gene Autry Show
The Gene Autry Show
The Gene Autry Show is an American western/cowboy television series which aired for 91 episodes on CBS from July 23, 1950 until August 7, 1956, originally sponsored by Wrigley's Doublemint chewing gum.-Overview:...
, Sugarfoot
Sugarfoot
Sugarfoot is the title of a TV western that aired from 1957 to 1961. The series featured Will Hutchins as fledgling frontier lawyer Tom Brewster and Jack Elam as sidekick Toothy Thompson...
, Cheyenne
Cheyenne (TV series)
Cheyenne is a western television series of 108 black-and-white episodes broadcast on ABC from 1955 to 1963. The show was the first hour-long western, and in fact the first hour-long dramatic series of any kind, with continuing characters, to last more than one season...
, and many others.
The peak year for television westerns was 1959, with 26 such shows airing during prime-time. In one week in March 1959, eight of the top ten shows were westerns. Increasing costs of production (a horse cost up to $100 a day) led to most action half hour series vanishing in the early 1960s to be replaced by hour long television shows, increasingly in color. Two unusual westerns series of this era are Zorro set in early California
Alta California
Alta California was a province and territory in the Viceroyalty of New Spain and later a territory and department in independent Mexico. The territory was created in 1769 out of the northern part of the former province of Las Californias, and consisted of the modern American states of California,...
under Spanish rule and the British/Australian western Whiplash
Whiplash (TV series)
Whiplash is a British/Australian television series made by the Seven Network and ATV and ITC Entertainment. Filmed in 1959-60, the series was first broadcast September 1960 in the United Kingdom followed by Australia in February 1961 and had opening titles featuring the Australian locale and...
set in 1850/60's Australia with four scripts by Gene Roddenberry
Gene Roddenberry
Eugene Wesley "Gene" Roddenberry was an American television screenwriter, producer and futurist, best known for creating the American science fiction series Star Trek. Born in El Paso, Texas, Roddenberry grew up in Los Angeles, California where his father worked as a police officer...
.
Examples
- The Lone RangerThe Lone RangerThe Lone Ranger is a fictional masked Texas Ranger who, with his Native American companion Tonto, fights injustice in the American Old West. The character has become an enduring icon of American culture....
was an American long-running early radio and television show created by George W. Trendle and developed by writer Fran Striker. The titular character is a masked Texas RangerTexas Ranger DivisionThe Texas Ranger Division, commonly called the Texas Rangers, is a law enforcement agency with statewide jurisdiction in Texas, and is based in Austin, Texas...
in the American Old West, who gallops about righting injustices, usually with the aid of a clever and laconic Native AmericanNative Americans in the United StatesNative Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
companion named TontoTontoTonto may mean:* Tonto, a band of Apache native Americans.* Tonto, the fictional sidekick to the Lone Ranger.* "Tonto", a song by the American math rock band Battles, from their album Mirrored.** "Tonto+", the EP centered around said song....
, and his horse Silver.
- The Roy Rogers ShowThe Roy Rogers ShowThe Roy Rogers Show is an American Western television series that broadcast 100 episodes on NBC for six seasons between December 30, 1951 and June 9, 1957. The show starred Roy Rogers as a ranch owner, Dale Evans as the proprietor of the Eureka Cafe in fictional Mineral City, and Pat Brady as...
was a black and white American television series that ran for six seasons from December 30, 1951 to June 9, 1957 on NBC, with a total of 100 episodes. The series starred Roy RogersRoy RogersRoy Rogers, born Leonard Franklin Slye , was an American singer and cowboy actor, one of the most heavily marketed and merchandised stars of his era, as well as being the namesake of the Roy Rogers Restaurants franchised chain...
, Pat BradyPat BradyPat Brady was best known as cowboy Roy Rogers' "comical sidekick." Pat's full name was Robert Ellsworth Patrick Aloysious O'Brady and this was shortened to "Bob Brady," although it is not known when the "O'" was dropped from "O'Brady."Born in Toledo, Ohio, Pat Brady first set foot on-stage at the...
, and Dale EvansDale EvansDale Evans, was an American writer, movie star, and singer-songwriter. She was the third wife of singing cowboy Roy Rogers.-Early life:...
. The show started airing in France on March 5, 1962. The series was nominated for an Emmy Award in 1955 for Best Western or Adventure Series
- RawhideRawhide (TV series)Rawhide is an American Western series that aired for eight seasons on the CBS network on Friday nights, from January 9, 1959 to September 3, 1965, before moving to Tuesday nights from September 14, 1965 until January 4, 1966, with a total of 217 black-and-white episodes...
was a television western series which aired on the American network CBS from 1959 to 1966. It starred Eric FlemingEric FlemingEric Fleming was an American actor, known primarily for his role as Gil Favor in the long running CBS television series Rawhide.-Early life:...
and launched the career of Clint EastwoodClint EastwoodClinton "Clint" Eastwood, Jr. is an American film actor, director, producer, composer and politician. Eastwood first came to prominence as a supporting cast member in the TV series Rawhide...
. Its premiere episode reached the top 20 in the Nielsen ratingsNielsen RatingsNielsen ratings are the audience measurement systems developed by Nielsen Media Research, in an effort to determine the audience size and composition of television programming in the United States...
. Rawhide was the fourth longest-running American TV western, beaten only by nine years of The Virginian and Wagon Train, 14 years of Bonanza, and 20 years of Gunsmoke. The typical Rawhide story involved droversDrovingDroving is the practice of moving livestock over large distances by walking them "on the hoof".Droving stock to market, usually on foot and often with the aid of dogs, has a very long history in the old world...
who would meet people on the trail and get drawn into solving whatever problem they presented or were confronting.
Late 1960s through 1980s
Traditional Westerns began to disappear from television in the late 1960s and early 1970s as color televisionColor television
Color television is part of the history of television, the technology of television and practices associated with television's transmission of moving images in color video....
became ubiquitous. 1968 was the last season any new traditional Westerns debuted on television; by 1969, after pressure from parental advocacy groups who claimed Westerns were too violent for television, all three of the major networks ceased airing new Western series. The two last traditional Westerns, Bonanza and Gunsmoke, ended their runs in 1973 and 1975 respectively. This may have been the result of an ongoing trend toward more urban-oriented programming that occurred in the early 1970s known as the "rural purge
Rural purge
The "rural purge" of American television networks was a series of cancellations between 1969 and 1972, the majority of which occurred at the end of the 1970-71 television season, of still popular rural-themed shows and shows with demographically-skewed audiences...
," though only two Westerns (NBC's The Virginian
The Virginian (TV series)
The Virginian is an American Western television series starring James Drury and Doug McClure, which aired on NBC from 1962 to 1971 for a total of 249 episodes. Filmed in color, The Virginian became television's first 90-minute western series...
and The High Chaparral
The High Chaparral
The High Chaparral is a Western-themed television series starring Leif Erickson and Cameron Mitchell which aired on NBC from 1967 to 1971. The show was created by David Dortort, who had previously created the hit Bonanza for the network...
) was canceled in the peak season of the purge in 1971. This period saw a revision of the western, with the incorporation of many new elements. The Wild Wild West
The Wild Wild West
The Wild Wild West is an American television series that ran on CBS for four seasons from September 17, 1965 to April 4, 1969....
, which ran from 1965 to 1969, combined Westerns with heavy use of steampunk
Steampunk
Steampunk is a sub-genre of science fiction, fantasy, alternate history, and speculative fiction that came into prominence during the 1980s and early 1990s. Steampunk involves a setting where steam power is still widely used—usually Victorian era Britain or "Wild West"-era United...
and an espionage-thriller format in the spirit of the recently popularized James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...
franchise. McCloud, which premiered in 1970
1970 in television
The year 1970 in television involved some significant events.Below is a list of television-related events in 1970.For the American TV schedule, see: 1970-71 American network television schedule.-Events:...
, was essentially a fusion of the sheriff-oriented western with the modern big-city crime drama. Hec Ramsey
Hec Ramsey
Hec Ramsey is a television Western, a production of Jack Webb's production company, Mark VII Limited, in association with Universal Studios, broadcast in the United States by NBC as part of the NBC Mystery Movie wheel show during the 1972-73 and 1973-74 seasons.-Overview:This series was...
was a western who-dunnit mystery series. Little House on the Prairie
Little House on the Prairie (TV series)
Little House on the Prairie is an American Western drama television series, starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert, about a family living on a farm in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the 1870s and 1880s. The show was an adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder's best-selling series of Little House books...
was set on the frontier in the time period of the western, but was essentially a family drama. Kung Fu
Kung Fu (TV series)
Kung Fu is an American television series that starred David Carradine. It was created by Ed Spielman, directed and produced by Jerry Thorpe, and developed by Herman Miller, who was also a writer for, and co-producer of, the series...
was in the tradition of the itinerant gunfighter westerns, but the main character was a Shaolin monk
Monk
A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism, living either alone or with any number of monks, while always maintaining some degree of physical separation from those not sharing the same purpose...
, the son of an American father and a Chinese mother, who fought only with his formidable martial art skill. The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams was a family adventure show about a gentle mountain man with an uncanny connection to wildlife who helps others who visit his wilderness refuge.
Little House on the Prairie
Little House on the Prairie (TV series)
Little House on the Prairie is an American Western drama television series, starring Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert, about a family living on a farm in Walnut Grove, Minnesota, in the 1870s and 1880s. The show was an adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder's best-selling series of Little House books...
was an American one-hour dramatic television program that aired on the NBC network from September 11, 1974 to March 21, 1983. During the 1982-83 television season, with the departure of Michael Landon, the series was broadcast with the new title Little House: A New Beginning. A miniseries called The Little House Years was aired in 1979.
The Young Riders
The Young Riders
The Young Riders is an American Western television series created by Ed Spielman that presents a fictionalized account of a group of young Pony Express riders based at the Sweetwater Station in the Nebraska Territory during the years leading up to the American Civil War...
premiered in the fall of 1989 and ran for 3 seasons. The show followed a group of riders for the fabled Pony Express which operated 1860-1861.
1990s and 2000s
The 1990s saw the networks getting into filming Western movies on their own. Like Louis L'Amour's ConagherConagher
Conagher is a 1991 Turner Network Television western film based on a Louis L’Amour novel of the same name, starring Sam Elliott as Conn Conagher, an honest, hardworking cowboy who learns that his fellow ranch hands plan to steal the boss's cattle. Katharine Ross, Elliott’s wife since 1984, stars...
starring Sam Elliott
Sam Elliott
Samuel Pack "Sam" Elliott is an American actor. His rangy physique, thick horseshoe moustache, and deep, resonant voice match the iconic image of a cowboy or rancher, and he has often been cast in such roles.-Early life:Sam Elliott was born in Sacramento, California, to a physical training...
and Katharine Ross
Katharine Ross
Katharine Juliet Ross is an American film and stage actress. Trained at the San Francisco Workshop, she is perhaps best known for her role as Elaine Robinson in the 1967 film The Graduate, opposite Dustin Hoffman, which won her an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, and her role...
, Tony Hillerman's The Dark Wind
The Dark Wind
The Dark Wind is the second Tony Hillerman novel to feature Officer Jim Chee. Recent college graduate Jim Chee has just taken a job with the Navajo Tribal Police in Arizona, where he helps keep the peace with his superior Captain Largo on land earmarked for joint use by the Navajo and the Hopi...
, The Last Outlaw
The Last Outlaw
The Last Outlaw is a 1919 short Western film directed by John Ford. Part of this film survives in the British Film Institute film archive and in the Museum of Modern Art film archive.-Cast:* Edgar Jones* Lucille Hutton* Richard Cummings* Jack Walters...
, The Jack Bull
The Jack Bull
The Jack Bull is a made for television western, produced for HBO, and directed by John Badham. The film is loosely based on Michael Kohlhaas, a novel by Heinrich von Kleist, with the script by Dick Cusack...
etc. A few new comedies like The Cisco Kid
The Cisco Kid
The Cisco Kid refers to a character found in numerous film, radio, television and comic book series based on the fictional Western character created by O. Henry in his 1907 short story "The Caballero's Way", published in the collection Heart of the West...
, The Cherokee Kid
The Cherokee Kid
The Cherokee Kid is the name of a 1996 HBO television movie starring Sinbad, James Coburn, Burt Reynolds, Gregory Hines, A Martinez, Ernie Hudson, Dawnn Lewis, and Vanessa Bell Calloway....
, and the gritty TV series Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years.
Zorro
Zorro (1990 TV series)
Zorro, also known as The New Zorro, New World Zorro, and Zorro 1990, is an American action-adventure drama series featuring Duncan Regehr as the character of Zorro. Regehr portrayed the fearless Latino hero and fencer on The Family Channel from 1990 to 1993...
was remade with Duncan Regehr
Duncan Regehr
Duncan Peter Regehr is a Canadian writer, multi-media artist, and film and television actor. He has also been a figure skater, an Olympic boxing contender, and a classically trained Shakespearean stage actor in his native Canada, before heading to Hollywood in 1980...
for The Family Channel filmed in Madrid, Spain.
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman
Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman is an American post-Civil War western/drama series created by Beth Sullivan. Dr. Michaela "Mike" Quinn, played by Jane Seymour, left Boston in search of adventure. She goes to Colorado Springs, Colorado where she establishes herself as doctor/adviser.The show ran on CBS...
was multi-Emmy Award winning western/dramatic television series in the United States, created by Beth Sullivan. It ran on CBS for six seasons, from January 1, 1993 to May 16, 1998.
Walker, Texas Ranger
Walker, Texas Ranger
Walker, Texas Ranger is an American television action crime drama series created by Leslie Greif and Paul Haggis, and starring Chuck Norris as a member of the Texas Ranger Division. The show aired on CBS in the spring of 1993, with the first season consisting of three pilot episodes. Eight full...
was a long-running western/crime drama series, set in the modern era, in the United States, that starred and later was produced by Chuck Norris
Chuck Norris
Carlos Ray "Chuck" Norris is an American martial artist and actor. After serving in the United States Air Force, he began his rise to fame as a martial artist and has since founded his own school, Chun Kuk Do...
. It ran on CBS for nine seasons, from April 21, 1993 to May 19, 2001. For most of their time on air, Dr. Quinn and Walker aired on the same Saturday night lineup.
In the 1993-1994 season, the Fox network aired a science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
western called The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., often referred to as just Brisco or Brisco County,The series is referred to as just Brisco or by Brisco County by the creator and executive producer Carlton Cuse, actors involved with the show, and by many critics. Some examples include:* Cuse, Carlton, DVD extra...
, which lasted for only 27 episodes. In the fall of 1995, the UPN
UPN
United Paramount Network was a television network that was broadcast in over 200 markets in the United States from 1995 to 2006. UPN was originally owned by Viacom/Paramount and Chris-Craft Industries, the former of which, through the Paramount Television Group, produced most of the network's...
network aired its own science fiction western, Legend
Legend (TV series)
Legend was a science fiction Western television show that ran on UPN from April 18, 1995 until August 22, 1995, with one final re-airing of the pilot on July 3, 1996. It was Richard Dean Anderson's first major role after the successful MacGyver series, and also starred John de Lancie, best known...
, which ended after 12 episodes.
Western TV shows from the 2000s included the syndicated Queen of Swords filmed in Almeria
Almería
Almería is a city in Andalusia, Spain, on the Mediterranean Sea. It is the capital of the province of the same name.-Toponym:Tradition says that the name Almería stems from the Arabic المرية Al-Mariyya: "The Mirror", comparing it to "The Mirror of the Sea"...
Spain, Louis L'Amour
Louis L'Amour
Louis Dearborn L'Amour was an American author. His books consisted primarily of Western fiction novels , however he also wrote historical fiction , science fiction , nonfiction , as well as poetry and short-story collections. Many of his stories were made into movies...
's Crossfire Trail
Crossfire Trail (film)
Crossfire Trail is a Turner Network Television film starring Tom Selleck in the role of Rafael "Rafe" Covington, a wanderer known for his honesty and steadfastness who keeps his word to a dying friend despite great adversity to himself. The tagline of the picture is "A hero is measured by the...
starring Tom Selleck
Tom Selleck
Thomas William "Tom" Selleck is an American actor, and film producer. He is best known for his starring role as Hawaii-based private investigator Thomas Magnum on the 1980s television show Magnum, P.I.. He also plays Police Chief Jesse Stone in a series of made-for-TV movies based on the Robert B....
, Monte Walsh
Monte Walsh
Monte Walsh is taken from the title of a 1963 western novel by Jack Schaefer. The movie has little to do with the plot of Schaefer's book. It was directed in 1970 by cinematographer William A. Fraker in his directorial debut, and starred Lee Marvin, Jeanne Moreau and Jack Palance. The movie was set...
, and Hillerman's Coyote Waits
Coyote Waits
Coyote Waits is a novel by Tony Hillerman. It was adapted as a TV film, which aired in 2003.-Coyote Waits :The plot involves rock formation vandalism, a dead policeman, an elderly Navajo accused of his murder, a bottle of expensive scotch, and a book on Navajo witchcraft beliefs.This book...
, and A Thief of Time
A Thief of Time
A Thief of Time is the eighth novel by author Tony Hillerman.The plot involves the Anasazi, a missing archeologist, a stolen backhoe, and people who are termed "pot hunters".Characters include Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee....
. DVDs offer a second life to TV series like Peacemakers
Peacemakers (TV series)
Peacemakers is an American crime fiction television series about forensic science in the Old West. It was filmed in Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada. The series premiered July 30, 2003, on the USA Network. The show was cancelled after one season of nine episodes.-Plot:This very interesting...
, and HBO's Deadwood
Deadwood (TV series)
Deadwood is an American Western drama television series created, produced and largely written by David Milch. The series aired on the premium cable network HBO from March 21, 2004, to August 27, 2006, spanning three 12-episode seasons. The show is set in the 1870s in Deadwood, South Dakota, before...
. In 2002, a show called Firefly
Firefly (TV series)
Firefly is an American space western television series created by writer and director Joss Whedon, under his Mutant Enemy Productions label. Whedon served as executive producer, along with Tim Minear....
(created by Joss Whedon
Joss Whedon
Joseph Hill "Joss" Whedon is an American screenwriter, executive producer, director, comic book writer, occasional composer and actor, founder of Mutant Enemy Productions and co-creator of Bellwether Pictures...
) mixed the Western genre with science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
. Justified
Justified (TV series)
Justified is an American television drama series created by Graham Yost. It is based on Elmore Leonard's novels Pronto and Riding the Rap and his short story "Fire in the Hole". Its central character is Raylan Givens, a deputy U.S. Marshal. The series is set in the city of Lexington, Kentucky...
is a series on FX that debuted in 2010, about a Western-style vigilante U.S. Marshal based in modern rural Kentucky.
With the growth of cable television
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...
and direct broadcast satellite
Direct broadcast satellite
Direct broadcast satellite is a term used to refer to satellite television broadcasts intended for home reception.A designation broader than DBS would be direct-to-home signals, or DTH. This has initially distinguished the transmissions directly intended for home viewers from cable television...
s, rerun
Rerun
A rerun or repeat is a re-airing of an episode of a radio or television broadcast. The invention of the rerun is generally credited to Desi Arnaz. There are two types of reruns—those that occur during a hiatus, and those that occur when a program is syndicated. Reruns can also be, as the...
s of Westerns have become more common. Upon its launch in 1996, TV Land
TV Land
TV Land is an American cable television network launched on April 29, 1996. It is owned by MTV Networks, a division of Viacom, which also owns Paramount Pictures, and networks such as MTV and Nickelodeon...
carried a block of Westerns on Sundays; the network still airs Bonanza and the color episodes of Gunsmoke as of 2011. Encore Westerns, part of the Encore slate of premium channels, airs blocks of Western series in the morning and in the afternoon, while the channel airs Western films the rest of the day. MeTV
MeTV
Me-TV is a television network owned by Weigel Broadcasting and distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer that airs classic television sitcoms, dramas and classic commercials from the 1950s through the 1980s. The network is a sister network to This TV...
, a digital broadcast channel, includes Westerns in its regular schedule as well.