LONE STAR. “Pilot.” Fox, 20 September 2010 (Season 1, Episode 1). James Wolk as Robert “Bob” Allen, a Texas con man married to Cat, the daughter of one of his marks in Houston, while simultaneously maintaining a relationship with Lindsay in Midland, Texas. He is in love with both women and begins to wish for a normal life; Adrianne Palicki as Cat Thatcher, Clint’s daughter; Eloise Mumford as Lindsay, Robert Allen’s unsuspecting girlfriend in Midland; David Keith as John Allen, Robert Allen’s father, who raised his son to be a con man; Jon Voight as Clint Thatcher, a Texas oil tycoon and father of Cat and her two brothers. Written by Kyle Killen. Director: Marc Webb. Currently available on YouTube here.

   Thanks again to Wikipedia for the scorecard of players and their roles, somewhat condensed. If you were one of people who watched this show back in 2010, you are one of a very few, relatively speaking. An estimated 4.06 million watched this first episode, and only 3.2 the following week. Six episodes were filmed but only two were actually aired.

   This sort of TV drama with just a tinge of crooked activity at heart isn’t my usual watching fare, but I enjoyed this. The players are all personable, especially James Wolk (Mad Men, Zoo), the leading man, and that always helps. You can easily believe him as a smooth-talking con man who can separate investors in Texas-based oil wells from their life savings as slick and easily as an eel in a fresh water pond. You can also easily believe him as a man with both a wife and a girl friend, neither of which knows anything about the other. And when offered a chance at a honest life, and he tells his father he’s going to take it, you can easily believe that too.

   I don’t know why this didn’t catch on. It was heavily promoted ahead of time, but obviously no one paid any attention. Perhaps the shows it was on opposite had something to do with that. I’d surely like to know where the story was going to go from here, but I’ve resigned myself to the fact that the chances I ever will are very, very slim, if not outright none.