I enjoy lots of different kind of movies and TV shows but westerns have always been among my favorites. As far as feature westerns go, my favorites are the ones starring John Wayne but I like a lot of different western TV series. I got pretty excited a couple of years ago when the first box set of Wyatt Earp came out...that was a 26-episode "best of" set including episodes throughout the show's run. But recently they finally came out with a new set and this time they made it a complete set of all the episodes of season one...35 half-hour episodes from the initial season that began airing in the fall of 1955.
Today a lot of people don't know how important this series was but it was big stuff in its time...it was one of the first "adult" TV series, having its first season the same season that Gunsmoke started. Hugh O'Brian starred as the no-nonsense lawman who (in a unique situation for TV westerns) defended law in more than one town. In this series, he started at Ellsworth, Kansas and then quickly moved on to Wichita and then Dodge City, finally finishing up his career in Tombstone. Bat Masterson shows up early in the first season but you won't recognize him if you're expecting someone like Gene Barry with a bowler...he's pretty much a young cowboy in this one...he does get fancied up later on in the series when he returns.
This set is pretty addictive if you're into westerns...I'm not big on marathon-watching myself but once I started watching it, I had not only completed the set within a week but then I pulled out the earlier "best of" set and watched the episodes in that set I hadn't seen yet as well. This first season set has some interesting guest-stars...Denver Pyle, Glenn Strange and Angie Dickinson among them. The earlier set has some nice extras including a then recent interview with Hugh O'Brian but this new season set has no extras. Too bad. It's still a terrific series that I would recommend to any westerns fan. I'll be eagerly awaiting the stagecoach delivering the next season whenever it manages to come out...but in the meantime, there's a passle of other westerns I want to watch in the meantime. Gunsmoke, Wanted: Dead or Alive or The Lone Ranger anyone?
