Wagon Train is an American Western series that ran on NBC from 1957–62 and then on ABC from 1962–65, although the network also aired daytime repeats, as Major Adams, Trailmaster and Trailmaster, from January 1963 to September 1965. The show debuted at #15 in the Nielsen ratings, rose to #2 in the next three seasons, and peaked at #1 in the 1961–62 television season. After moving to ABC in the autumn of 1962, the ratings began to decline, and Wagon Train did not again make the Top 20 listing.
The series initially starred veteran movie supporting actor Ward Bond as the wagon master, later replaced upon his death by John McIntire, and Robert Horton as the scout, subsequently replaced by lookalike Robert Fuller a year after Horton had decided to leave the series.
The series was inspired by the 1950 film Wagon Master directed by John Ford and starring Ben Johnson, Harry Carey Jr. and Ward Bond, and harkens back to the early widescreen wagon train epic The Big Trail starring John Wayne and featuring Bond in his first major screen appearance playing a supporting role. Horton’s buckskin outfit as the scout in the first season of the television series resembles Wayne’s, who also played the wagon train’s scout in the earlier film.
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Have Gun – Will Travel is an American Western television series that aired on CBS from 1957 through 1963. It was rated number three or number four in the Nielsen ratings every year of its first four seasons. It was one of the few television shows to spawn a successful radio version. The radio series debuted November 23, 1958.
The television show is presently shown on the Encore-Western channel.
Have Gun – Will Travel was created by Sam Rolfe and Herb Meadow and produced by Frank Pierson, Don Ingalls, Robert Sparks, and Julian Claman. There were 225 episodes of the TV series, 24 written by Gene Roddenberry. Other contributors included Bruce Geller, Harry Julian Fink, Don Brinkley and Irving Wallace. Andrew McLaglen directed 101 episodes and 19 were directed by series star Richard Boone.
Deadwood is the story of the early days of Deadwood, South Dakota; woven around actual historic events with most of the main characters based on real people. Deadwood starts as a gold mining camp and gradually turns from a lawless wild-west community into an organized wild-west civilized town. The story focuses on the real-life characters Seth Bullock and Al Swearengen.
Seth Davenport is masquerading as a small town Iowa preacher in the hopes of starting a full-blown insurrection against the status quo, unaware that an industrialist tycoon has hired a professional strikebreaker to stop the uprising by any means necessary. An epic saga of the secret history of the 1930’s American heartland, chronicling the mythic conflict and bloody struggle between big money and the downtrodden, God and greed, charlatans, and prophets.
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 central character is lawman Marshal Matt Dillon, played by William Conrad on radio and James Arness on television. When aired in the UK, the television series was retitled Gun Law.
The radio version ran from 1952 to 1961, and John Dunning writes that among radio drama enthusiasts “Gunsmoke is routinely placed among the best shows of any kind and any time.” The television version ran for 20 seasons from 1955 to 1975, and was the United States’ longest-running prime time, live-action drama with 635 episodes. In 2010, Law & Order tied this record of 20 seasons. At the end of its run in 1975, Los Angeles Times columnist Cecil Smith wrote “Gunsmoke was the dramatization of the American epic legend of the west. Our own Iliad and Odyssey, created from standard elements of the dime novel and the pulp western as romanticized by Buntline, Harte, and Twain. It was ever the stuff of legend.”
A dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the evolution of sin. Set at the intersection of the near future and the reimagined past, it explores a world in which every human appetite, no matter how noble or depraved, can be indulged.
Road to Avonlea is a television series which was first broadcast in Canada and the United States between 1990 and 1996. It was created by Kevin Sullivan and produced by Sullivan Films in association with CBC and the Disney Channel, with additional funding from Telefilm Canada.
It was adapted from the following books by L.M. Montgomery: The Story Girl, The Golden Road, Chronicles of Avonlea and Further Chronicles of Avonlea.
Some episodes of the show were turned into the independent books by different authors. There have been around 30 titles released.
In the United States, its title was shortened to simply Avonlea, and a number of episodes were re-titled and re-ordered. When the series was released on VHS and DVD in the United States, the title changed from Road to Avonlea to Tales from Avonlea.
The series is set in the fictional small town of Avonlea, Prince Edward Island, in the early 20th century. There, 10-year-old Montreal heiress Sara Stanley is sent by her wealthy father to live with her two maiden aunts, Hetty and Olivia King, to be near her late mother’s side of the family. The show’s focus shifted over the years from Sara’s interactions with her new-found relatives, to stories about the King family. Later seasons of the show focused more on residents of Avonlea who were connected to the King family. Sarah Polley left the show in 1994, returning for one guest appearance in the 6th season and one in 7th season.
The Rifleman is an American Western television program starring Chuck Connors as rancher 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 was filmed in black-and-white, half-hour episodes. “The Rifleman” aired on ABC from September 30, 1958 to April 8, 1963 as a production of Four Star Television. It was one of the first prime time series to have a widowed parent raise a child.
Tin Man is a 2007 four and a half hour miniseries co-produced by RHI Entertainment and Sci Fi Channel original pictures that was broadcast in the United States on the Sci Fi Channel in three parts. The first part aired on December 2, and the remaining two parts airing on the following nights. It was released to DVD on March 11, 2008; the same year it was rebroadcast in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Starring Zooey Deschanel, Neal McDonough, Alan Cumming, Raoul Trujillo, Kathleen Robertson, and Richard Dreyfuss, the miniseries is a continuation of the classic story The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, with science fiction and additional fantasy elements added. It focuses on the adventures of a small-town waitress named DG who is pulled into a magical realm called the O.Z., ruled by the tyrannical sorceress Azkadellia. Together with her companions Glitch, Raw, and Cain, DG journeys to uncover her lost memories, find her true parents, and foil Azkadellia’s plot to trap the O.Z. in eternal darkness.
Costing $20 million to produce, the first part of miniseries was the highest-rated program in its timeslot, with 6.4 million viewers; the miniseries itself would be the highest-rated miniseries of 2007. It was nominated for nine Emmy awards, winning one, and was also nominated for a Critics’ Choice Award. Critics gave it mixed reviews, with some praising the acting, soundtrack, and visual effects, while others found it overly grim and bleak.
When the Los Angeles County’s Sheriff dies, an arcane rule forged back in the Wild West thrusts the most unlikely man into the job: a fifth-generation lawman, more comfortable taking down bad guys than navigating a sea of politics, who won’t rest until justice is served.
The Big Valley is an American western television series which ran on ABC from September 15, 1965, to May 19, 1969. The show stars Barbara Stanwyck, as the widow of a wealthy nineteenth century California rancher. It was created by A.I. Bezzerides and Louis F. Edelman, and produced by Levy-Gardner-Laven for Four Star Television.
