"Maverick"

TV Show Rating:  100

 

"Maverick" is being rerun on the Western Channel.  Turner Classic Movies and the Western Channel represent my main TV viewing these days, besides sports.  The Western Channel is also rerunning "Bat Masterson" (rating 89, with Gene Barry), "The Big Valley" (with Barbara Stanwyck in her later, frozen face years--rating 76) and "The Rifleman" (Chuck Conners--rating 81).

 

Yes, I admit that I might be influenced by the rosy glow from my childhood.  However, I am rewatching the episodes of Maverick, and they are so much better than today's TV and today's Westerns, that it is not even funny. Of course, every episode is not rated 100.  In fact, most are not.  But the overall quality is amazingly high.

 

yes, the rating primarily applies to the episodes with James Garner--one of the best actors who ever lived, and perhaps THE best TV actor who ever lived (surely in the top 5).  However, some of the "Bart Maverick" episodes (Garner is "Bret"), and even a few Roger Moore episodes, are pretty darn good.  The "Bart Maverick" episode lampooning "Bonananza" is classic (with "Moose" and "Small Paul").

 

James Garner (who also was in the best TV PI series of all time--"The Rockford Files", rating 100) is just so COMFORTABLE in the role of the easy going, reluctant knight in shining armor, Bret Maverick.  If you have the chance, and can stand old style Westerns at all, you should watch "Maverick".

 

I do feel that I was blessed to grow up in the "golden age" of television--before television had to be "hip", with an "edge".  "I Love Lucy" (100, but obvious), "Leave it to Beaver" (100), the Andy Griffith show (100), "Gunsmoke" (100), "Have Gun, Will Travel"  (Richard Boone, 100), "Wanted Dead or Alive (Steve McQuenn, 83), "Rawhide" (Clint Eastwood, 81), Wyatt Earp (Hugh O'Brien, 81), "Get Smart (Don Adams, 100), Bonananza (80), High Chaparral" (rating 85), the Ann Southern show (86), Eve Arden, Tales of Wells Fargo (Dale Robertson, 79), Death Valley Days (Ronald Reagan!!!, anthology), General Electric Theater (anthology), "The Twilight Zone" (Rod Serling, 100),  "the Outer Limits" (83), the Loretta Young show, Eve Arden, "I Married Joan" (Joan Davis, rating 82), "Green Acres (somewhat later, but still 100),  "My Three Sons" (Fred MacMurray, 94), "The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (86), The Groucho Marx show (100), the Gracie Allen show (Burns and Allen, 100)--the list just keeps on going.  Television never got any better than that, just as movies never got any better than those shown on Turner Classic Movies (mainly dating prior to 1965, with obvious exceptions). 

 

Yes, I admit bias.  But the stuff was GOOD, and (as the old TV show channels have proved) stands up better than the "hip" stuff is likely to stand up.  The humor and "messages" were TIMELESS, instead of aimed at the lowest level of the "culture". 

 

P.S.  Yes, "Maverick" is part of the name of this blog.  I can't say that I had the TV show in mind when I named the blog.  However, it might have been in the back of my mind.  I only wish I could be as smooth and cool as James Garner.  One thing I can say with 100% certainty is that the blog was NOT named after John McCain.  Readers of this blog know my view of John McCain (politically).  I could agree that McCain is a "Maverick", who ENJORYS criticizing conservatives much more than he enjoys criticizing others.  He is NOT, however, a "conservative".