Cowboy up!
If there's one thing TV viewers have been fascinated by since Day 1, it's the Western. Westerns were a major part of the TV landscape during its first decade, beginning in 1949 with Hopalong Cassidy (edited from old William Boyd films) and peaking in 1959 when an astonishing 26 prime-time oaters were on the air.
Show of hands, fellow baby boomers. Who remembers Maverick, Gunsmoke, The Lone Ranger, The Rifleman, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Laramie, Bonanza, The Virginian, Wagon Train, Sugarfoot, Cheyenne and Have Gun, Will Travel?
I credit that early inundation with America's fascination with that period in our nation's history and its many colorful characters. TV has evolved (devolved) into dozens of formulaic crime shows these days, frequently featuring a serial killer of the week. But we can still indulge our Western craving thanks to AMC.
The American West docudrama miniseries premieres at 9 p.m. Saturday on AMC and uses dramatizations, interviews and visual effects to tell the tale of the Wild West between 1865 and 1890. AMC labels it "the violent world of cowboys, Indians, outlaws and lawmen."
Caution: The violence in the re-creations matches the subject matter and is, indeed, graphic. The series is not for the small fry.
The limited series' tagline is "the truth is always wilder," and will demonstrate how the West became the land of opportunity for enterprising Americans eager to begin anew after the Civil War.
Most Americans know at least the basics about the famous characters of the old West, but the documentary will chronicle the more intimate, little-known aspects of the lives of such Western legends as outlaws Jesse James and Billy the Kid, Wild West show promoter Buffalo Bill, lawmen Wyatt Earp and Pat Garrett, Oglala Lakota chief Crazy Horse and Lakota medicine man and leader Sitting Bull, and doomed cavalry commander Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
For a Hollywood touch, the series also features interviews with notable actors from classic Western films. They include James Caan (El Dorado), Burt Reynolds (Navajo Joe, Gunsmoke), Tom Selleck (Last Stand at Saber River), Kiefer Sutherland (Young Guns), Mark Harmon (Crossfire Trail), Ed Harris (Riders of the Purple Sage, Appaloosa) and Danny Glover (Silverado).
Also chiming in will be Robert Redford, whom we fondly remember as the Sundance Kid from the 1969 Western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Paul Newman played Butch.
We can thank Redford, who has lived in the West (Utah) since the 1960s, for the eight-episode series. He is the executive producer, along with Stephen David (The Men Who Built America, The World Wars).
David tells AMC, "The series will allow viewers the opportunity to explore an era of famous outlaws and lawmen who shaped American history, connected through a larger story that's never been told before in this way."
Ironically, much of the series was filmed in West Virginia's extreme eastern panhandle.
Wait! There's more! Let's turn Saturday night into an all-Western AMC experience.
• Hell on Wheels. At 8 p.m. Saturday just before The American West, AMC will roll out Part 2 of Season 5 of its Western adventure Hell on Wheels.
There will be seven more episodes before our hero, former Confederate soldier Cullen Bohannon, rides off into the sunset.
Or maybe rides the train into the sunset since the series follows Bohannon (Anson Mount), and his work on America's first transcontinental railroad.
AMC promises that fans will get all they've expected as Bohannon "contends with corruption, greed and murder as he leads the trek to complete the final stages of the building of the railroad through the Sierras and across the Utah desert to Promontory Point."
The concluding episodes will bring on the final showdown between Bohannon and those standing in his way: the bloodthirsty Swede, Thor Gunderson (Christopher Heyerdahl); the mercenary labor contractor Chang (Byron Mann); and the rapacious Union Pacific tycoon Thomas Durant (Colm Meaney).
While it's no spoiler that the railroad gets completed, it's still a mystery who'll be left standing by the time the golden spike is finally driven on May 10, 1869.
And, AMC teases, "No one is more at risk than Bohannon."
What? AMC wouldn't kill off our hero, would it?
Hell on Wheels has been a steady performer for AMC, especially on the usually dead Saturday night. Season 4 delivered a respectable 3.5 million viewers per episode on average and it has been the No. 1 cable show for its time slot.
Style on 06/05/2016