Richard Boone steps off the Oklahoma prairie in 1901, holstering a cut-down Colt and a box of fingerprint powder as Deputy Chief Hec Ramsey. The former gunslinger has swapped reputation for science, facing a town that still thinks justice comes from the barrel of a rifle. Rick Lenz is the green police chief who needs him, Harry Morgan the coroner who supplies both bodies and whisky, and together they form the strangest law trio in New Prospect. Each 90-minute case aired monthly within NBC's Mystery Movie wheel, wedged between Columbo and McCloud.
Scripts milk the clash between old myths and new methods: in 'Hangman's Wages' a killer demands the release of an outlaw headed for the electric chair, forcing Ramsey to prove that evidence beats legend. The production lingers on period kit, brass magnifiers and ink pads replacing the usual six-gun showdowns. Jack Webb sold the show as 'Dragnet meets John Wayne', and the network sold ads against the novelty of a western that begins after the West has supposedly ended.
Universal pulled the plug after ten episodes when Boone and the studio stopped talking, leaving Ramsey's forensic frontier to fade into rerun memory.
Production Details
NBC / 2 Seasons / 11 Episodes / 1972
Writer(s): Harold Jack Bloom
Producer(s): Jack Webb
Main Cast
Richard Boone as Hec Ramsey
Rick Lenz as Chief Oliver Stamp
Harry Morgan as Doc Amos Coogan
Kurt Russell as Matthias Kane
Stella Stevens as Ivy Turnwright
Perry Lopez as Sgt. Juan Mendoza
Sharon Acker as Nora Muldoon
Angie Dickinson as Sarah Detweiler
Luther Adler as
Dee Carroll as Mary
