Maverick (TV Series) Maverick at Law (1961) User Reviews

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[agentv-2 · 8/10 · 18 May 2011]

This series reaches some real high points, and this episode had a lot that I liked.

Some of the styling echoes Hitchcock. The story is rich and makes full use of the time. The writing occasionally had me cheer. For me, it's incredible when I marvel to find that so much story will fit into the hour. That happened with this one.

Jack Kelly had really seasoned the role by this point and nailed the story down hard.

Don't tell me that this 1961 episode didn't have the seeds of "Wild Wild West" brewing in it. It helped me remember what I like about the "Picket Fence and Parlor western."

James Bond stand ready. The wild west is coming for you.

Roped in on a robbery

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 31 December 2018]

Gage Clarke who did many a Maverick episode is in this one playing a rather meek and inoffensive bank teller, much like Alec Guinness in The Lavender Hill Mob. But he has a plan up his sleeve to rob the bank he works at where Tol Avery treats him like something stuck to his shoe. He gets a couple of real crooks Kern Dibbs and James Anderson just like Guinness did to pull off the job. But Avery crosses them up and returns after Dibbs and Anderson have entered at night.

Poor Jack Kelly who was playing poker as he usually did gets roped into this scheme when Clarke who had the loot stuffs it in Bart Maverick's saddle bag. Kelly has a devil of time trying to convince all concerned that he wasn't part of the robbery.

I dare not say more, this one has more twists to it than a pretzel in the saloon Bart Maverick was playing poker in. Everybody has a streak of larceny in him and in the end Gage Clarke has a streak of something more.

Nicely plotted and Dolores Donlon an old friend is sent for as part of a Maverick style con. That's worth seeing too.