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The Old West: Marshall Brisco County (R. Lee Ermey) has just arrested the heads of the John Bly (Billy Drago) gang. But then, the train he ships them to justice in crashes into a boulder that has, in best cartoon tradition, a landscape painted onto it to camouflage it, and of course it's an ambush laid by Bly's associates, and the Marshall is shot dead by all of those he had just captured. Now this worries the "barons" who "rule" the West, having shared all the profitable businesses among themselves, so they had their lawyer Socrates Poole (Christian Clemenson) hire a bounty hunter to track down the Bly gang, none other than the deceased lawmaker's son Brisco County jr (Bruce Campbell).

In an at first separate storyline, while blasting through a mountain to make way for the railroad, four Chinese railroad workers find a weird orb that gives them superpowers, so they break their chains and escape. Now this is something railroad baron Thorogood (Stuart Whitman) desparately wants to get his hands on, but it's confiscated by the gouvernment.

Meanwhile, Brisco is almost killed by the Chinese Tong, but when he goes investigating deep into Chinatown, he meets a man (James Hong) indebted to his father who tells him John Bly's associate Big Smith has put a hit on him (M.C. Gainey), so Brisco is off to track down Big Smith via his saloon singer girlfriend Dixie Cousins (Kelly Rutherford), who does have a soft spot for him, and has no problems following her to Big Smith's hideout, where he's quick to impress Smith, taking on another identity. It doesn't take him long to find out the gang is planning to rob a train carrying a large gold shipment and the orb from above narrative thread, and they plan on doing this by diverting the train to an abandoned coal mine. Before he can do anything to interfere though, Brisco is found out thanks to the arrival of rival bounty hunter Lord Bowler (Julius Carry) and tied to the train track to be overrun by the very train Smith and gang want to rob. He's saved by his horse last minute though, and thanks to the help of befriended professor Wickwire (John Astin), he's equipped with a rocket that helps him overtake the train, enter it, use the element of surprise to overcome Smith and his gang - while losing the orb in the process - and ultimately foiling the baddies' plans and take out the first one of the Bly gang's inner circle.

One question remains open though, how did the gang know when the gold train would pass through pretty much to the minute? Why, from train baron Thorogood of course, who wanted the orb to gain superpowers - but of course, he gets his just dessert in the end.

Now this is a fun throwback to B westerns and western serials of the 1930s and 40s, before the genre as a whole got too standardized, but the hommage is lightened up with humour (not parody), which is pretty much lead actor Bruce Campbell's forte. The outcome is maybe no masterpiece, and this pilot is also hampered by 1990s TV traditions and limitations, but a very enjoyable little romp that flows along very well and entertains throughout. It's rather unfortunate then that in 1993 there was no great demand for light-hearted western and no 1930s or 40s revival in sight, and Bruce Campbell, talented as he was, was a star almost exclusively to the horror crowd with only limited mainstream appeal, so the series only lasted one season - which is some shame because it's some good genre television and probably among the best shows that the 1990s had to offer.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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