Bret and Bart Maverick (and in later seasons, their English cousin, Beau) are well dressed gamblers who migrate from town to town always looking for a good game. Poker (five-card draw) is ...
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Bret is picked clean & stranded in Sunny Acres by the burg's arrogant banker, so he puts together an M Team of con artists to take down & embarrass the handle-barred buzzard in Denver, while Bret ...
Bret, seeking buried Confederate treasure in Elwood, Kansas, keeps running afoul of U.S. Marshal Mort Dooley. The marshal keeps running Bret out of town. Bret, in turn, keeps outwitting the lawman.
Bret rides into Bent City with Waco Williams, a man he encountered out on the trail. Waco, while not seeking a fight, won't run away from one, either. As a result, Waco's life is threatened more than...
After the Civil War, nomadic adventurer Cheyenne Bodie roamed the west looking for fights, women, and bad guys to beat up. His job changed from episode to episode.
Stories of the journeys of a wagon train as it leaves post-Civil War Missouri on its way to California through the plains, deserts, and Rocky Mountains. The first treks were led by gruff, ... See full summary »
Set in Sweetwater, Arizona in the 1880s with solid citizen Bret owning a ranch and part of the Red Ox Saloon. Stable cast with varying stories, often centered on conflict between the ambitious sheriff and everyone else.
Dressed-up dandy (derby and cane), gambler and lawman roams the West charming women and defending the unjustly accused. His primary weapon was his wit (and cane) rather than his gun.
Marshal Earp keeps the law, first in Kansas and later in Arizona, using his over-sized pistols and a variety of sidekicks. Most of the saga is based loosely on fact, with historical badguys... See full summary »
The Shiloh Ranch in Wyoming Territory of the 1890s is owned in sequence by Judge Garth, the Grainger brothers, and Colonel MacKenzie. It is the setting for a variety of stories, many more ... See full summary »
Bret and Bart Maverick (and in later seasons, their English cousin, Beau) are well dressed gamblers who migrate from town to town always looking for a good game. Poker (five-card draw) is their favorite but they've been known to play such odd card games as Three-toed Sloth on occasion. The show would occasionally feature both or all three Mavericks, but usually would rotate the central character from week to week. Written by
John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>
Series Creator Roy Huggins never received on-screen credit for this show. In the 1950s, Warner Brothers wanted to avoid paying royalties to creators, and wanted all television projects to be based on properties held by the studio. The pilot episode was based on a Warner Brothers-held book, "War of the Copper Kings"; Huggins' script became season one, episode two, "Point Blank". Huggins wouldn't get credit until Maverick (1994). See more »
Goofs
Filming seemed to take place in a limited number of spots, so you see some very familiar scenery repeating both within and between episodes. Be prepared for a chase scene passing the same trees and rocks several times, as well as certain scenes cropping up in stories supposedly hundreds of miles apart. Standard stuff for its day. See more »
Quotes
Bret:
Waco, I've never seen a man do so many things wrong. Have you ever been in a gulf hurricane?
Waco Williams:
Nope.
Bret:
Well, it's the big pine trees and the thick oak trees that get uprooted first. The palm trees are smart - they give with the wind.
Waco Williams:
That sounds like pretty good advice for trees.
Bret:
They live a long time.
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James Garner's acting on 1957's TV series "Maverick" is superbly inspired but usually underrated because he memorably told the press at the time that he "can't act. I'll learn if I have to, but so far I haven't had to." This modest refusal to champion himself publicly resulted in his performances being taken much more for granted, but viewed today, it's apparent that here was a world-class talent throwing himself into every scene, registering a virtual three-ring circus of facial expressions; there is always something going on to look at, in severe contrast to most of the other TV western leads of the era. Jack Kelly, normally a more pedestrian performer, lights up to incandescence in his scenes with Garner and their astonishing chemistry vaults the series' fantastic entertainment value phenomenally, although Kelly's solo outings aren't in the same league and his acting seemed to deteriorate along with the quality of some of the scripts in the wake of Garner's departure. Kelly was completely and utterly lacking Garner's genius for comedy, except when working directly with Garner.
I always thought of Garner's character's warmth as being his hallmark trait, perhaps as a result of years of seeing "The Rockford Files," but upon recently studying the "Maverick" tapes it became apparent that his character was basically cool and chilly, almost businesslike with an Indiana Jones-like seriousness in his routine comportment, but quite warm with friends. This surprised me. When people refer to Bret Maverick as "cool," they're actually much more correct than I ever would've assumed.
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James Garner's acting on 1957's TV series "Maverick" is superbly inspired but usually underrated because he memorably told the press at the time that he "can't act. I'll learn if I have to, but so far I haven't had to." This modest refusal to champion himself publicly resulted in his performances being taken much more for granted, but viewed today, it's apparent that here was a world-class talent throwing himself into every scene, registering a virtual three-ring circus of facial expressions; there is always something going on to look at, in severe contrast to most of the other TV western leads of the era. Jack Kelly, normally a more pedestrian performer, lights up to incandescence in his scenes with Garner and their astonishing chemistry vaults the series' fantastic entertainment value phenomenally, although Kelly's solo outings aren't in the same league and his acting seemed to deteriorate along with the quality of some of the scripts in the wake of Garner's departure. Kelly was completely and utterly lacking Garner's genius for comedy, except when working directly with Garner.
I always thought of Garner's character's warmth as being his hallmark trait, perhaps as a result of years of seeing "The Rockford Files," but upon recently studying the "Maverick" tapes it became apparent that his character was basically cool and chilly, almost businesslike with an Indiana Jones-like seriousness in his routine comportment, but quite warm with friends. This surprised me. When people refer to Bret Maverick as "cool," they're actually much more correct than I ever would've assumed.