Sun 14 Feb 2016
A TV Pilot Episode Review: LEGEND “Birth of a Legend” (1995).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV Westerns[5] Comments
“BIRTH OF A LEGEND.” First episode of the first and only season of the TV series Legion, United Paramount Network (UPN), two hrs., 18 April 1995. Richard Dean Anderson (Ernest Pratt), John de Lancie (Janos Bartok), Mark Adair-Rios (Huitzilopochtli Ramos), Jarrad Paul (Skeeter). Guest cast: Bob Balaban, Stephanie Beacham, Katherine Moffat, Jon Pennell. Creators: Michael Piller & Bill Dial. Director: Charles Correll.
Teaming up Richard Dean Anderson, who had just finished a long gig as MacGyver, with John de Lancie, not nearly as well known except to Star Trek fans as the omnipotent and very charismatic alien being Q, was a felicitous idea that should have worked. But success or not in the annals of network TV is a chancy thing, especially when it comes to small fledgling networks, and as fate would have it, the series lasted only twelve episodes before fading away forever.
The basic concept is hardly a new one. Sometime in the 1860s, Anderson plays a dime novelist named Ernest Pratt who gets mistaken by the townspeople of Sheridan, Colorado, for the fictional and very popular hero of his long series of books, Nicholas Legend. Far from being a hero himself, Pratt spends his days gambling and drinking in the saloons of San Francisco, but he has only himself to blame for the mixup: his stories are written in the first person and images of his face are prominently featured on all the covers.
Learning from a good-looking female attorney (Katherine Moffat) that a warrant has been issued for his arrest in Colorado, it takes some effort, but he is finally convinced to take a trip there in order to clear his name. Causing the local townsfolk to believe that he was their savior by means of one of his many inventions is eccentric scientist Janos Bartok (de Lancie), but the deed has also severely disrupted the plans of wealthy landowner Vera Slaughter (Stephanie Beacham), who caused the charges against Legend to be drawn up.
I doubt that I am the first to call this show a combination of Wild Wild West and Maverick, but I think the connection fits. The show is played for laughs as much as anything else, but since we’re in on the gag from scene one, I don’t believe that that was one of the primary causes of the series’ early demise. I do think, though, that Anderson may have portrayed his role a little too broadly. (He isn’t that funny.)
This is the only episode I’ve watched so far from the set of DVDs just recently released, so I can’t tell you what kind of adventures that Legend and Bartok will have from here. This may also be one of those concepts that just has no place to go. This is a series that depended on both charisma and wacky 19th century inventions. There may not have been enough wacky inventions to go around.
February 15th, 2016 at 12:06 am
This series had its charm despite itself. All the cast hams it up sadly often making the characters annoying and pompous.
It was a sf/western in 1995 an era when even the best attempts at westerns had a hard time finding an audience.
ADVENTURES OF BRISCO COUNTY,JR. had tried and failed on Fox (93-94).
But the killer was UPN the “fifth or sixth” network (along with WB). It was part of the first season of UPN and even STAR TREK VOYAGER had rating problems on UPN.
Yes, the entire series is available to watch on YouTube. Here is the “The Life,Death, and Life of Wild Bill Hickock.”
February 15th, 2016 at 12:09 am
A lot of people have been waiting for this series to come out on dvd for the past twenty years. There was much discussion of it on the old MacGyver discussion list and some people felt it couldn’t quite decide whether to be a comedy or a serious drama. I have seen every episode many times (wait until you see the episode called “The Death and Life of Wild Bill Hickok”) and wrote a regular column about it for Dime Novel Round-Up. I wish the dvd had some commentary or “making of” feature. Anderson’s character was based on dime novel writer Ned Buntline and DeLancie’s character on Nicolas Tesla. I had the pleasure of meeting Anderson and some of the cast in Los Angeles a number of years ago. I also interviewed Bill Dial, one the creators, for an article in Dime Novel Round-Up. I thought it handled the dime novel background very well.
February 15th, 2016 at 2:31 pm
I enjoyed this, although I think Anderson was just trying to be hard to be funnier than he actually is capable of being.
February 15th, 2016 at 3:10 pm
This played very irregularly locally so I only saw one episode and look forward to seeing it now.
The basic concept of sf and western or turn of the century or early 1900’s adventure or mystery in a camp vein has been tried and tried and tried in varying forms ever since the success of the WILD WILD WEST. Shatner and Dennis Cole in THE BARBARY COAST, Rod Taylor (and wasn’t that also Dennis Cole) in STUTZ BEARCATS, Rod Taylor in THE OUTLAWS, Sam Waterson in Q.E.D., THE ADVENTURES OF BRISCO COUNTY … they invariably run a single season and are usually fondly remembered by most of us, and as invariably fail in the ratings. Robert Conrad even did a failed pilot as the original ADVENTURES OF NICK CARTER that co starred Pat O’Brien and Broderick Crawford, then even pre WILD WILD WEST there was the Leslie Neilson DARK INTRUDER, a failed pilot that was released as a theatrical film and later the Ceasare Danova and Wilfrid Hyde White CHAMBER OF HORRORS that was also released as a theatrical film, but made as a pilot for a series.
I recall all those fondly.
The British and even the French have had success with series set in the time period, but of course not the American West or the late 19th century American milieu.
I will look forward to LEGEND though.
February 15th, 2016 at 7:02 pm
Skeletons in the Closet opening scene is a good example of how the show could go too over the top. I liked this series but it had its flaws.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp4RNny9t2c