Not Sure Where To Start?
Pick a hero. Any hero. Then go find an episode that sounds exciting. Pour yourself a whiskey or a sarsaparilla, cuddle up with your favorite blanket or rifle or cavalry saber. And once you've done that, si'down and shud-up and watch it. It ain't that hard.
Go Bounty Huntin' With The King of The Cool
Wanted: Dead or Alive.
Steve McQueen stars as Josh Randall, a bounty hunter with a sawed-off rifle called the Mare's Leg, a knack for getting into terrible scrapes & a good heart hiding under his leathery tuff exterior.
Episode Length: 30 mins
Tone: Most often dark, sometimes randomly comedic. Lil' bipolar. Just like good ole Steve.
The Man With No Name
The Virginian.
Few western shows are as homey as The Virginian, thanks to the camraderie of its ensemble cast & its steady location of Shiloh Ranch. The foreman is a man called the Virginian, and yup that's all you're ever gonna get.
Episode Length: 90min
Tone: Homey, epic, built around terrific friendships and often boasting iconic guest stars. And shot in full glorious color, in case you're a tenderfoot who's skired of black and white.
Hollywood. Modernity. Private Eyes.
77 Sunset Strip.
The Warner Bros. show that went hand-in-hand with all these classic westerns, save for one twist. It was a detective show, set in the same Hollywood that was making all these shows. (Sometimes seems they made this show just for the fun they could have breaking the 4th wall on all the others...)
Starring the one & only legend: Efrem Zimbalist Jr.
Episode Length: 50min
Tone: Murder Mysteries, suave and elegant detectives & lots of very hip laughs, daddio.
Pick Your Hero
Few More Options
If you like your hero saintly, smart or extremely stubborn... if you want him to be struggling through high school or disarming Soviet missiles... nurturing a deaf-mute cowpoke or hunting a mail-order bride who kills her husbands... if you want him trapped in a collapsed mine or yelling at flirty little girls... if you want him kidnapped by an Injun with a crush or tryna convert the town delinquents... you're still in the right place. (Of course, if you like amnesia, blindness & ill-fated romance... you can't go wrong, everybody gets their turn with those three.)
