Shark Bytes

I am now almost ashamed to say I never watched any of the series until Comache
moon, it certainly held my interest.
It did make me sad and hoping for more
so I could see outcome of the charactes
It was to me a cliff hanger, wanting to know what would happen to them.
I liked the show very much.

The best mini series ever. Duval and TL Jones had the best on screen chemistry in history.

Watch the scene where Gus has to kill his own horse for cover as he tries to fend of some Comancheros. When Gus says 'By God, that is enough', and makes that uhbelievable shot will put a grin on your face and a tear in your eye at the same time. That is acting and writing at the very best.

This is the best miniseries I've ever seen on television and it is one of those rare gems that actually lives up to the standard of the book. Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones are perfect as McCrae and Call. However, it jumped the shark when we got into sequels, prequels and series. Return to Lonesome Dove was a cliche western Hollywood sequel to the original story. It is obvious that Larry McMurtry had nothing to do with this project. The characters are not true to form and many of the new ones are sad copies of the original story, IE Gideon Walker (Gus McCrae), cherokee Jack (Blue Duck) and Isom Picket (Deets.) Streets of laredo is McMurtry's authentic work and james Garner seldom goes wrong, but this story is just too dark and depressing to match Lonesome Dove. Dead Man's Walk, the prequel to Lonesome Dove, is a better selection. At least we have gus in it. But its still not the original. As for the series...no comment. It wasn't McMurtry. I always wondered why tv producers never thought up the idea of creating a series based on Gus and Call in their formative years in between the events of Dead Man's Walk and Lonesome Dove. It would have been easier to swallow than Comanche Moon. The duo of Gus and Call and McMurtry's blend of action, drama and romance can never be matched in the western genre.

Lonesome Dove is, quite simply, the best TV miniseries ever made, in any genre. Only I, Claudius matches its brilliance in screenwriting and ensemble acting, and in production values Lonesome Dove beats I, Claudius hands down. The Emmy Awards should have been abolished after Robert Duvall was denied a Best Actor Emmy for playing Gus McCrae. Here you had Tommy Lee Jones at HIS best, Anjelica Huston at HER best, Diane Lane and Danny Glover and Frederic Forrest at THEIR best, Rick Schroder and Robert Urich at a best nobody knew they had (though only Schroder would match that best in later years), and glimpses of great actors of the future such as Steve Buscemi. Not surprisingly, the sequels couldn't live up to the original. The Streets of Laredo was the only one that came close, and because of Larry McMurtry's plot choices I think of it less as a sequel than an alternative Lonesome Dove universe. Return to Lonesome Dove at least had Schroder, outstanding once again as Newt, but the script was uneven. Jon Voight and Barbara Hershey, though fine actors, weren't quite up to replacing Jones and Huston as Call and Clara. The series spinoff I watched only intermittently; the second season (Outlaw Years) was the more interesting, but there were too many dullsville characters NOT created by McMurtry. I never saw the prequel, Dead Man's Walk, and what I've heard about it makes me glad I didn't.

This show Jumped The Shark the first episode of the syndicated series but jumped back with the first episode of the second season, The Outlaw Years. The first season was pretty vanilla and safe but the Outlaw Years was the darkest, most compelling Western I have ever seen on TV. It was great TV but was cancelled after the 2nd season.

Never Jumped! The "two" series spinoffs were really one and the same - just had different names. Fantastic story - Would love to see more.

"Lonesome Dove" was as fine a miniseries as has ever been on, but it just dragged on and on with two sequels, a prequel, and one or two syndicated series following it. I guess the sharks actuallt ate the Dove when Barbara Hershey was cast as Clara in "return to Lonesome Dove". Clara's a formidable character, and having a lip-biting little sex kitten like Hershey in the role was ludicrous. After that casting, to assure "star power" and more money, the floodgates were open-- McMurtry would publish anything he could get on paper about the characters, and the TV producers would put it all on tape.

This mini-series was the best thing I've ever seen on television. Period. Leave a good thing alone!