Bret Maverick | |
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Title card |
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Genre | Western Comedy |
Developed by | Gordon Dawson |
Starring | James Garner Ed Bruce Ramon Bieri John Shearin David Knell Richard Hamilton Stuart Margolin Darleen Carr |
Country of origin | United States |
Language(s) | English |
No. of seasons | 1 |
No. of episodes | 18 |
Production | |
Location(s) | California |
Running time | 60 mins. |
Broadcast | |
Original channel | NBC |
Picture format | 1.33:1 |
Audio format | Monaural |
Original run | December 1, 1981 | – May 4, 1982
Chronology | |
Preceded by | Maverick The New Maverick Young Maverick |
Followed by | Maverick |
Bret Maverick is an American Western series starring James Garner in the role that made him famous in the 1957 series Maverick: a professional poker player traveling alone year after year through the Old West from riverboat to saloon. The series was produced by Garner's company Cherokee Productions (mistakenly dubbed "Comanche Productions" on the end credits) in association with Warner Bros. Television.
Although the ratings were respectable, the show was unexpectedly canceled by NBC at the end of the first season. Jack Kelly, who had alternated the lead with Garner and later Roger Moore in the original 1957-1962 series, had been slated to return as Bret's brother Bart Maverick in the second season, and briefly appeared at the very end of the only season. A number of scripts for the following season had been written and presented to Kelly, according to subsequent interviews; Bart was going to look after the saloon in Arizona while Bret ranged across the West.
NBC took the unusual step of rerunning the episodes two additional times - in the summer of 1988 to help provide 'new' programming during a writers strike, and in the summer of 1994 to play off publicity surrounding the Mel Gibson movie remake of the original Maverick series also featuring Garner.
The 1978 TV-movie The New Maverick could be said to be the pilot for both this series and the 1979 failure Young Maverick, a short-lived series which had featured Charles Frank as preppie former Harvard student Ben Maverick, the son of Roger Moore's character Beau Maverick (although Moore only appeared in the original series).
Other recurring cast members of the series, set in the small Arizona town of Sweetwater, include country singer Ed Bruce as Tom Guthrie, Bret's partner and co-owner of the Red Ox Saloon; Stuart Margolin as crooked Native American Philo Sandeen; Richard Hamilton as Cy Whitaker, the aging but feisty foreman of Maverick's ranch; Ramon Bieri as local banker Elijah Crow; and Darleen Carr as Mary Lou "M.L." Springer, a fetching owner, editor, and photographer of the local newspaper.
The 2-hour first episode was eventually trimmed and repackaged as a TV movie for rerunning on local stations under the title Bret Maverick: The Lazy Ace. Additionally the series' only two-part episode was similarly repackaged as Bret Maverick: Faith, Hope and Clarity.
Writer/producer Roy Huggins, original creator of the titular character but otherwise unconnected with this series despite Garner's request that he come aboard mid-season, speculated that one reason the new show didn't quite work was that Maverick, traditionally a drifter, had settled down in one place; this was going to be rectified the following season, in which Bret would travel while Bart ran the saloon in Arizona.
As a tribute to the character featured on this television series, on April 21, 2006, a ten-foot bronze statue of James Garner as Bret Maverick was unveiled in Garner's hometown of Norman, Oklahoma, with Garner present at the ceremony.
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The series has reaired on Encore Westerns since fall 2008.