One of the staples of TV entertainment when I was growing up was the Western. The TV Western was popular because the Western was a very popular genre for books and short stories.
Here is a partial list of the shows I remember:
The Lone Ranger
Death Valley Days
Davy Crockett
The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin
Zorro
Gunsmoke
Broken Arrow
Maverick
Have Gun — Will Travel
Wagon Train
Bat Masterson
Lawman
The Rifleman
The Rebel
Rawhide
Bonanza
The Virginian
The Wild Wild West
The Big Valley
Daniel Boone
Laredo
F Troop
The High Chaparral
Then in the 1960s things began to change. Spy shows became the in thing (thank you James Bond) and the Western began a slow ride into the sunset. By the late 1970s, both Western TV shows and fiction were pretty much passé.
However, for lovers of the Western, things just might be turning around. TV shows have aired to a fair degree of popularity. Shows such as
Godless
The Pinkertons
Hell on Wheels
Deadwood
Into the West
Longmire
These shows are very different from their 1950s and 60s cousins. There is often more blood and gore. A lot more. There is much more foul language. There is nudity, sometimes lots of it. There are women in main roles. They take a more sympathetic view of Native Americans. And they present us with a more accurate, and more ugly view of American history.
Western fiction today is very much a niche market, being divided into several sub-categories, such as Classic Western, Western Romance, Weird West, and Steampunk.
A look at Amazon’s top 100 bestselling Westerns reveals that all of the books are in the top 5000 in the paid Kindle store. The #1 Western (which by the way doesn’t happen to be a romance), was written by an indie author, and ranked #154 in the overall paid Kindle store. Pretty doggone good, if you ask me. Especially for a genre that is supposed to be dead.
Even James Patterson (co-authored with Andrew Bourelle) has a Western. Its 46 pages long and Hachette charges $9.99 for the story. And some people complain that my Nightmare in Agate Bay, being 72 pages long, is too expensive priced at $2.99! I guess indie authors are just supposed to give their books away. Bullsh*t.
Now you might ask why am I talking about Westerns. After all, I don’t write them and I very rarely read them.
Well, last year I read Jacquie Rogers’s Hot Work in Fry Pan Gulch. The book was very funny and very good.
For #IndieApril on Twitter, I read Chris Derrick’s The Tainted Dollar. A doggone good classic Western.
Between those two novels, I watched
A Fistful of Dollars
For a Few Dollars More, and
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
And now I’m hooked on Hell on Wheels and I’m re-watching The Wild Wild West.
I guess I do indeed enjoy a good Western. To balance out the movies and TV shows, I may have to put Zane Grey, Max Brand, and Louis L’Amour on my TBR list and maybe a few indie authored books as well.
In a way, the Western is as American as apple pie. And I do so love apple pie.
Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!
Share This!
Howdy pardner! Thanks for a great list of great old shows. NOT that I saw them myself! My father…grandfather told me about them. That’s my story and I’m sticking with it.
But, slightly more seriously, I love the WESTWORLD series, which combines the Western with SF, TWO great genres for the price of one. Westerns, or their tropes at least, live on thinly disguised in movies like AVATAR (aka DANCES WITH ALIENS!) and FIREFLY/SERENITY.
Howdy! Thanks, John, for adding some great shows! I haven’t seen Westword, but it’s now on my list. And those western tropes do live on as they crossover into other genres. In Firefly/Serenity the Western flavor is very obvious. Maybe the makings of a future post here. Thanks for stopping by!
I watch few TV series, but WESTWORLD is excellent, quite a development of Michael Crichton’s 1973 movie and its 1976 sequel FUTUREWORLD. There was also a short-lived 1980 TV series called BEYOND WESTWORLD.
Incidentally, Crichton made much of his 1978 THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY in Cork, where I live, and on the railroad to Dublin. The same railroad also features in Jules Verne’s novel AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAY.
Didn’t know that about the railroad. Thanks for the info, John! One more reason to visit your fair land! 🙂
That’s a lot of mileage for a book. Ah, to be so lucky, eh?