Gunslingers

I rate the Gunslingers series one of the best Old-West doku-drama's of all time, and certainly much better than the Redford "Old-West" series.

I like many of the actors performances but particularly Jack Elliott portraying Bat Masterson, Nathan Sapsford as Bill Doolin, Eric Schneider as John Wesley Hardin and of course Walt Willey as Wild Bill Hickok, but I'm also a big fan of J.D. Marimon's Jim Masterson performance, and I would just love to see an entire episode dedicated to him.

A big "thank you" to the producers for this series. I hope there will be a season 3. From the top of my head I could imagine such characters eg. Luke Short, "Curly Bill" Brocius, William Longley ,Dallas Stoudenmire and of course Jim Masterson just to mention a few.

This mini-series is very well made giving a feel of a nice balance of "first person" reenactment and documentary. That is exactly what I enjoy - it doesn't become a boring documentary with purely photos and historians speaking, but, includes the various gunslingers' lives acted out. I always feel that things one experiences visually tend to stick in the mind easier than just "flat" documentaries and this is one of those cases. I find myself remembering the acting parts more than the parts where historians give their bit. I'm not expecting a western movie, so, no complaints on story and acting. Even content is just perfect - I don't need the full gritty detail, just a high-level overview of the various outlaws. So, all in all, this works for me and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Gunslingers would have been a great series if it did not have loud, banging music and noise in the background throughout the entire series. This made it difficult to concentrate and hear every word clearly. It is supposed to be background music, not foreground music.

this is a very weird and boring series that i cannot even know how to categorize it into an appropriate genre. it's like a mixture of historical documentary and half-baked TV drama, hiring so many bad actors to play those historical/legendary western characters being tagged as 'gunslingers' in it. the narrations were just so boring, the way of its directing and editing are both disastrously uninteresting. i just failed to sit through to watch the first episode. it just looked so disconnectedly boring. if you decided to make a series with certain historical background, it's fine, but with so many 2nd rated actors who might not even qualified for any B movie to play those legendary roles, then how could you make me to sit tight to go along with it? the general way of how these episodes' screenplays were put together is a messy blah, blah and blah boring talks between scenes that i just couldn't care less. this was one of the worst viewing experiences i have in recent years.

I have gotten addicted to this show, it has a great balance of historical information and re-enactments to be informative and entertaining. As mentioned, the first-person accounts make it more interesting than a pure documentary. The episode concerning Bass Reeves was extremely informative as he is an important person of that era but not well known (some claim he was the basis of the Lone Ranger series). I was also "satisfied" with the Wild Bill Hickok story (viewers will understand the pun!).

All in all, a highly enjoyable series on the old west! Definitely worth watching if you have any interest in that period.