What Westerns Do You Like?

Gunsmoke and Bonanza were my top favorites. I liked Rawhide, too. The Wild Wild West, of course, was an obvious spoof. Not so obviously, so was Have Gun Will Travel.

My favorites were:
Have Gun Will Travel
The Westerner
Maverick
Cheyenne
Gunsmoke (when it first made the transition from radio)

But I liked nearly all of them.

I'm surprised to recognize so many. I guess Maverick, High Chapperal, and Bonanza - which had the benefit of a top theme song.

I loved the "Bat Masterson" theme song, but I don't remember the show well enough to say for sure whether I liked it or not. I think I did like it, but I'm not certain. It's a pity they don't show some of the classic series anymore. I always wonder whether it's because they didn't preserve the prints very well or for some other reason.

I didn't like Bat Masterson and I didn't like Wyatt Earp, both for the same reason. Artistic license is fine when the story abd the characters in it are obviously fictional. But both Earp and Masterson are historical figures. It bothers me when historical accuracy is sacrificed on the altar of entertainment.

Me too, Andrew. Masterson was still quite a deal, though. An the source of one of my favorite quotes. ~"Everyone gets their fair share of ice; the rich get theirs in the summer, the poor - in the winter."

When he was a newspaper reporter, he used to sell guns on the side. He got a good price for a gun carried by Bat Masterson, and never made any claims as to just how long he had carried any particular one.

I like all those and more.

Big Valley
Dr. Quinn
Snowy River
Borderline
The Cambells
Wagon Train
The virginian
How the west was won
Loredo

My user name was taken from a character in Snowy River.

Oops, I forgot "The Virginian." Wow, that was a long time ago. I no longer remember it very well, but I recall watching it regularly. I'm afraid I've never heard of "Snowy River," but now you've made me curious.

The Virginian is still on here on our western station along with most of the others I listed. Snowy River is a western based in Australia which was one of the newer series that was filmed around the same time as Dr. Quinn. They took it off my western station recently and replaced it with The Lone Ranger :-( I can't get myself to watch that or Zorro, LOL!

Bonanza, The Lone Ranger

Anybody remember Trackdown? It was a short-lived series (just one season, I believe), which starred Robert Culp and, in one of the final episodes, introduced Steve McQueen as Josh Randall, the bounty hunter. The McQueen character was spun off into a series of his own. Wanted Dead or Alive, which ran for several seasons before McQueen started to make a name for himself in feature films, begining with The Magnificent Seven.

Kung Fu,and Little House on the Prairie.
I also like the one with Jane Seymour as a doctor on the frontier, I can't remember the name.

Death Valley Days was not a 100% real western. It remained popular for many years. The Old Ranger was my favorite of the several hosts on there.

I watched The Guns of Will Sonnet, but I thought the show mediocre at best.
Johnny Yuma and The Rifleman were always good, as were Lawman and Tales of Wells Fargo.

Edgar, wasn't Ronald Reagan host of Death Valley Days for a while?

Hobitbob, the show you're thinking of is Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (I think).

Whover listed The Man from Snowy River. that's not a Western. Just because it has to do with men on horseback herding cattle, doesn't cut it. A 'Western' has to have the American West, not the Australian Outback, as a setting.

I also loved Brisco County Junior!

If we are including movies, then Shanghai Noon is my absolute favourite!
Roy: So What's your name?
Chon: Chon Wang!
Royu: John Wayne, that's a terrible cowboy name!

Hosts of Death Valley Days included
The Old Ranger
Ronald Reagan
Dale Robertson
Kenny Rogers (I think)
There were several, anyway.

I liked the characters in Brisco County. My one complaint: They never let him do anything heroic.

Whover listed The Man from Snowy River. that's not a Western. Just because it has to do with men on horseback herding cattle, doesn't cut it. A 'Western' has to have the American West, not the Australian Outback, as a setting.[/quote]

Well, they're all on horses, so it's a western to me ;-)

The Rifleman is the one that stuck with me. I am watching it from time on the Hallmark channel and it holds up well.

I also liked Cheyenne and its clones, Sugarfoot and Bronco, but having not seen them in more than 40 years, its hard to say if they would still have the appeal they did to my juvenile self.

Ty Hardin, the star of Bronco, has a website which includes the theme song from the show. In later life he became a minister, after expressing dismay at the declining moral standards of the film industry.

According to the internet movie database, "Ty Hardin became a self-styled "freedom fighter" in the 1970s, and led a group called the Arizona Patriots. The Arizona Patriots were an anti-Semitic group with an emphasis on stockpiling weapons and baiting public officials.

After a mid-1970s dispute with the IRS, Hardin ran a tax protest school called the Common Law Institute, whose packet of materials included a "Patriot Handbook" containing "tested cases and methods to maintain good personal freedom." In 1983 and 1984, Hardin edited The Arizona Patriot, a monthly journal that printed diatribes against government officials, calls for "Christian Patriots" to band together, and reprints of articles from anti-Semitic publications.

Following a two-year FBI undercover probe, Federal agents raided a Patriot camp in 1986, and confiscated a hoard of weapons and publications from Aryan Nation groups. Ty Hardin left Arizona, and the group soon ceased to function."

He now leads a church in Prescott, Arizona.

Brisco County was a mighty fine western too.