Bring Back The Western

Syndicated liberal radio talk show host Ed Schultz recently discussed the spate of cop shows on television and lamented the absence of  westerns like Bonanza. Like Schultz, I watch and like some crime dramas, but I too miss westerns, one of my favorite genres. (The closest thing to the genre was Deadwood, set in 19th-century South Dakota, which I watched on DVD and thoroughly enjoyed.)

According to novelist/screenwriter Larry McMurtry (author of Lonesome Dove and other western novels), in his slim book, Hollywood: A Third Memoir (Simon & Schuster, 2010), "The expense of using livestock, horses mostly, has risen so disastrously in the last twenty years as to have--for a while--virtually killed off a once popular and very profitable genre: the Western."

Let's hope that the film and TV industries will find a way or ways to resume making westerns, a genre whose stories are inextricably linked to the western expansion of the United States.