The Wild West

- Season 1

(2006)

Talking heads and documentary style narration combine with reenactment of Custer's last stand. In 1876 Lakota and Cheyenne tribes fled the reservations,taking guns given them for hunting and set up a huge village by the Little Big Horn river. Custer and Reno led two separate groups of soldiers to catch and return them to the reservation but an underestimation of the native Americans' strength of numbers and marshy conditions preventing the Cavalry from crossing the river led to Custer's and Reno's men being routed with many casualties.

This episode focused on Billy The Kid - whether he really deserved his infamy as a 'badman' and whether he should be posthumously granted a Pardon. The general consensus of considered opinion is that he should be granted this Pardon.

In 1881 Virgil Earp,marshal of Tombstone, suspects Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers of stealing cattle and,backed up by his brothers Wyatt and Morgan and 'Doc' Holliday,challenges them to surrender near the OK corral. In the following thirty second shoot-out the suspected and unarmed thieves are shot in the back,leading to the Earps standing trial for murder - though they are exonerated by the judge,who also happens to be a relation. This retelling,along with commentaries,is a far darker version of the story in which the Earps are usually represented as the ...