How the West was Won (TV series)

This is the 2 hour pilot for the short lived western series which was based on the 1962 movie of the same name. When the series was first shown in the UK, way back in 1976, it was a huge success - even spawning a comic strip in the weekly comic, Look-In. According to the WIKI the show was actually more popular in Europe than it was in the US itself.

The pilot is superb - it does away with the limitations of the small screen and presents a wonderful looking vista (Please note, thanks to Bill Gates, it is rare to find the words wonderful and Vista in the same sentence, so please appreciate the uniqueness of the writing.) that would do a big budget movie proud - the Civil War scenes are shot in such a way as to make more appear on screen than is actually there, clever shots of specific parts of the battle scenes give the feeling of a truly mammoth spectacle. And it's not only visually impressive but the depth of the story is outstanding - in one intense scene we see scores of refugees escaping across America's dirt tracks which rams home the futility of the war far better than any battle scene, in another we see landscapes that John Ford would have been proud to call his own and in yet another we are given a good old fashioned saloon brawl.


Everything a western fan needs then.


The pilot tells a suitably big story - we see the family fleeing West, upon the way they deal with hostile Indians, outlaws, cholera and the ever approaching war. And the cast are truly excellent - James Arness plays mountain man, Zeb the way one imagines John Wayne would have, and he dominates the screen in every scene he appears in. A young Bruce Boxleitner gives a powerhouse performance as the wayward Luke and Fionnula Flanegan holds everything together as Molly Culhane.

Excellent