Greatest TV Westerns

[will2012]

Not many westerns around anymore. But they used to be a staple of night time TV. Here is a list of the supposed 10 best. What's your favorite?

 

http://www.latare.com/10-Greatest-TV-Westerns.htm

 

I like Maverick.

[hrothgar]

Do Firefly and Battlestar Galactica count as westerns?

[kenberg]

Actually I was wondering if Maverick would count. It is set in the 1800s in the West, so in that sense it's a Western. But no one would confuse it with Gunsmoke. Anyway, I enjoyed Maverick but like many series it overstayed it's welcome, imo.

 

I liked Gunsmoke a lot. This show evolved also, and my recollection is that it became more brutal as time went on. I lost interest.

 

 

Rawhide was a fine show. I did not watch it regularly, I can't say why, but it was good. Ditto for The Rifleman. Hoss was a lot of fun in Bonanza.

 

They did not include The Rebel on the list. "Johnny Yuma, was a Rebel, he wandered alone...". The star, Nick Adams, had a small part in Pillow Talk, of all things.

 

I was surprised, but somewhat pleased, to see that Have Gun, Will Travle did not make the list. I often liked the story line but I found the main character of Palladin to be unbearably pretentious. I see from the Wik that many of the episodes were written by Gene Roddenberry which probably explains both the interesting story line and the pretentiousness.

[blackshoe]

Yancy Derringer. Davy Crockett. Wyatt Earp. Bat Masterson. All characters in their own Western series when I was a kid. Not among the top ten, but I enjoyed them.

 

The Lone Ranger was another one.

[inquiry]

"Have gun will travel" paladin....

[barmar]

Do Firefly and Battlestar Galactica count as westerns?

Apparently the compilers of this list think that Firefly counts, since it placed #2. No way of knowing what they think of BG. I personally don't think so, it has more in common with military dramas.

[onoway]

About 8 years ago I ran across a series of the Roy Rogers TV shows. Never having seen them before I watched one story series. It was remarkable to see that he did NOT go for his gun when strongly provoked but remained cool and self possessed. When eventually he was pretty much forced to shoot, he didn't shoot to kill but to disarm, which was always successful, of course. It would now be considered hopelessly naive but it made me somewhat nostalgic for a different society than we now enjoy.

[barmar]

Roy Rogers was mostly a children's show, was it not?

 

(BTW, I started to write that as "aimed at children", but saying that a gunfighter "aims at children" felt inappropriate post-Newtown; yet it seems that the only common phrasings are based on this metaphor.)

[BunnyGo]

F troop was on reruns when I was growing up. Not many classic westerns were still around then.

[blackshoe]

Most of the "cowboy heroes" through the 50s, and even later, were adept at shooting the gun out of the bad guy's hand, or otherwise disabling him without actually putting holes in him. As you say, those were simpler times.

 

Roy Rogers and Gene Autry were more singer than cowboy.

 

Battlestar Galactica does not, IMO, qualify as a Western. Firefly does.

 

"I am a leaf on the wind." B-)

 

Hm. Kung Fu was a Western of sorts.

[Thiros]

Any way we can count Breaking Bad as a western?

 

I know, it's a huge reach...

[squealydan]

Growing up with only one (yes, really!) or two tv channels, there were still a few westerns on though much of that top ten list is new to me.

 

I recall The Virginian, The High Chaparel (sp?), The Lone Ranger, Zorro, Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie of course which is a bit different.

 

Being only about 8 when I last watched any of these, I can't really say whether any of them were good.

 

 

Is this an old list as I'd have thought Deadwood would make a top ten?

[kenberg]

I gather that Deadwood had a lot of fans. I found the vulgarity to entertainment ratio to be too high for me. These things sometimes remind me of my sophomore year in high school when in an attempt to fit in with a tough group that I would never fit in with I started using bad grammar and saying eff a lot. Live and learn. Deadwood had enough fans so that I am willing to concede that this was probably my error, but I just never got into it enough to see its merits.

 

 

As with an earlier list of sitcoms, I suppose that this list is largely a commercial for dvds that they hope you will buy/rent. A source for discussion, not to be taken seriously.

 

At the other extreme from Deadwood we see the Roy Rogers / Gene Autry / Lone Ranger shows. Sure, these were for kids, but they were Westerns, at least of a sort. My memories of such go back to radio, comic books, and Saturday afternoon movies for the kids. I have these random memories from childhood and one of them is going to see the John Wayne movie Red River. The internet tells me this was in 1948 when I would have been nine. I recall coming out of it somewhat stunned, as it was not at all like the Roy Rogers / Hopalong Cassidy / Tom Mix stuff that I was used to. I decided that I liked it.

 

I was glad to see Big Valley on the list. My life was complicated at the time and I only watched it on occasion but I have always been a Barbara Stanwyck fan. The Wik tells me that by 1944 she was the highest paid woman in the United States. I'm impressed.

[Gerben42]

I only know Maverick and the 1885 Back-to-the-Future. But I think they should count.

 

Ah - remembered I watched "once upon a time in the west". At this point I knew Westerns are NOT my kind of movies.

[sharon j]

Although it was not a regular series but a special 3 part series, Lonesome Dove was my favorite TV western. It still is one of my favorites. :)

[Phil]

Fond memories of The Wild Wild West reruns growing up. Was way ahead of its time.

[barmar]

Just realized that WWW and Firefly are kind of inverses of each other. WWW was a western with sci-fi elements, while Firefly was a sci-fi show with western qualities.

[pigpenz]

Most of the "cowboy heroes" through the 50s, and even later, were adept at shooting the gun out of the bad guy's hand, or otherwise disabling him without actually putting holes in him.

my very first day in anatomy class

the first thing the professor said

"contrary to what you see in westerns, you dont get winged in the shoulder and come

back in two weeks and take care of the bad guy.....you are either paralyzed in that arm

or bleed out."

[blackshoe]

In some movie or tv show I saw recently, somebody got "winged in the shoulder" — with a .50 caliber round. He was shown a minute or so later with a little blood on his shoulder and no visible hole. Nonsense, says I. I've seen what a .50 caliber round does to a human body. That dude would have had his armed severed from his body and bled out in probably no more than a minute. But the hydrostatic shock would have killed him instantly.

[barmar]

Let's please not turn this pleasant thread into a clone of the gun control thread.

[blackshoe]

It's not about gun control, or violence, or gore. It's about the unbelievable stuff that Hollywood expects us to believe. But I suppose that doesn't necessarily diminish our enjoyment of such shows, or Hollywood would stop making them because we would stop watching them.

 

Unlike Ken, I don't remember when I realized that Westerns for adults, like those John Wayne did, were not the same as the "kid" stuff I was used to.

[barmar]

It's not about gun control, or violence, or gore. It's about the unbelievable stuff that Hollywood expects us to believe. But I suppose that doesn't necessarily diminish our enjoyment of such shows, or Hollywood would stop making them because we would stop watching them.

That's what it's about so far. But it's very close to the tangent, and I'm trying to head it off at the pass (a western metaphor).

[blackshoe]

Hehe. Fair enough.