User Reviews

"Tate" qualifies as one of the most off-beat western television dramas. This black & white oater with David McLean who gained fame as the Malboro man in cigarette commercials and also died from lung cancer. Think of the character that Sam Elliot played in "Thank You For Smoking," and you'll understand the comparison. "Tate" is a really neat show. The rugged, lonesome protagonist is a Civil War survivor, except his left arm hangs uselessly, blasted by an explosion in the war, and he wears his crippled limb in black leather sheathe with a strap around his neck. David McLean reminded me of Cliff Robertson. I don't know if Sergio Leone ever watched the show, probably didn't, but the hero dresses like a spaghetti western hero in a couple of episodes, sometimes even wearing a serape to conceal his lame limb. Naturally, he is super-fast on the draw.

Each episode opens with Tate displaying his celerity with his six-gun. "Tate" belongs in the same league as "The Prisoner." Tate himself is a gunslinger and doesn't cry about his choice of profession or behave in a politically correct fashion. He has his own sense of uncompromising values, and he sticks with those values. He isn't an indiscriminate killer. You've got to be on the right side of the law and have some legal proof to your claim before Tate will accept your money, but once he accepts the money, he doesn't back down. He has no sidekick and carried a sawed-off shotgun as back-up. He doesn't call his horse by a nickname.

The shows are half-hour in length and there is nothing gratuitous in them. They are concise, tight, and they do some pretty alarming things. In one episode, a jealous man kills a pretty saloon girl with a double-barreled shotgun. There is ZERO humor in the show. It's all about business. There are no recurring characters, except Tate. Tate is grim, stoic, to the point, and doesn't solicit sympathy.

Harry Julian Fink who wrote and created "Dirty Harry," had a hand in the many rewrites of "Ice Station Zebra," penned John Wayne's "Big Jake" and "Cahill, U.S. Marshall," created the show and served as the script consultant.

There are a few guest stars that you may recognize. One of the first shows in the series opens with an angry gunman going after Tate to kill him. Tate kills him before the second break in the narrative. The unknown actor who gets gunned down stone dead is none other than Robert Redford. Later, Redford shows up in another episode as an entirely different character who protects his ranch wife from Comanche Indians, principally the chief of the redskins, played by Leonard Nimoy of "Star Trek." In one episode, James Coburn plays a prisoner destined to hang for killing an entire family after the daughter of the family refused to marry him. Robert Culp plays a be-spectacled bounty hunter in another scene. Tate doesn't get a lot of sympathy. Warren Oates makes the mistake of talking when he should be shooting and Tate takes him out. Other than his limp arm, Tate shares no secrets, but he does point out that he has a mailing address, general delivery, Kansas City. There is a strain of Biblical quoting running through the show like a thread and usually the biggest Bible quoters are the biggest dastards. Meantime, Martin Landau plays a sheep herder in one episode and he gives a brilliant performance as a reformed Civil War raider that Tate is taking in for his war crimes. Some of the dialogue crackles. Once, when Culp's bounty killers gets the drop on Tate, he warns Tate that he can take him either as "pig or pork." For the record, Tate only gets kissed once in the entire 13 episodes by Julia Adams in the episode "The Mary Hardin Story." Indeed, there is a lot of violence, too. "Tate" emerges as a memorable, but short-lived western. Watch it!