The Return of the Western
AMC has been on a roll with "Breaking Bad",
"Mad Men" and the "Walking Dead".
Once the bread and butter of Hollywood, the Western has fallen on tough times for decades. Today movie and TV audiences appear to favor spies, fucking lawyers, aliens and zombies.
Don't get me wrong I love a good end of the world alien flick as much as the next guy. But I also love the classic Western genre that represents all it means to be an American.
I must give credit to American Movie Classics for creating the Western show Hell on Wheels.
The show provides the gritty realism of what the west must have really felt like: crooked politicians, greedy businessmen, racism, bravery, hard working immigrants, murder and more. Great acting and solid scripts combined with history and realism. Bravo AMC.
The ratings were not what AMC wanted so they shipped the show off to Saturday night for a swift and painful death. But a funny thing happened, millions the show's fans followed the series over to Saturday night.
Hell on Wheels laughed at the Saturday night death time slot.
The series’ recently-concluded third season averaged 3.3 million viewers, a surprisingly strong number considering its shift to the TV graveyard known as Saturday night. To reward its solid performance, AMC has expanded Season 4 (coming next summer) to 13 episodes — up from 10 for the first three seasons reports TV Line.
“AMC has served passionate Western fans for three decades, so it is particularly gratifying to see these viewers capping off their Saturdays with an original Western on what has historically been a tough night of the week for television,” noted AMC president Charlie Collier in a statement. ”Our commitment to the genre is unwavering and we look forward to continuing to super-serve this audience with an expanded fourth season of Hell on Wheels.”
See more at Hell on Wheels.
A Look at Season 3: Inside Hell on Wheels
And Season 4 Cometh Next Summer As the ultimate fan of the Western here is my list of my top ten Western movies. . 1) The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) 2) The Searchers (1956) 3) The Magnificent Seven (1960) 4) A Fistful of Dollars (1964) 5) Silverado (1985) 6) Red River (1948) 7) Tombstone (1993) 8) Stagecoach (1939) 9) Rio Conchos (1964) 10) Jeremiah Johnson (1972) |