What Makes A Good Western Good?
she will continue to read on or watch on. One other factor makes good characters more important. All westerns of substance are essentially morality plays. They almost universally depict the struggle between good and evil in a visceral, personal and violent way. That’s what makes them exciting and makes us want to read and watch them. It’s probably why in the heyday of westerns on television we never had one showing a family living in total tranquility on the frontier, raising their crops and tending their animals without incident, sharing Sunday suppers with the local friendly Indians and greeting the always kind and benevolent strangers that passed their way. It sounds nice but aside from not being realistic it would be boring as heck. A show like that wouldn’t have lasted a month. The closest show to that premise I can recall was “Little House On The Prairie”. It was light
