My wife and I have "MeTV" as part of our cable package, and the network runs all the popular shows from the 60s and 70s, including the classic westerns: Gunsmoke, Rawhide, Wagon Train, Have Gun Will Travel, Rifleman, Wanted Dead or Alive, to name a few. We've been pleasantly surprised at the quality of these shows, but nothing comes close to the Wagon Train episodes. "The Michael McGoo Story" is one of the best. Charlie Wooster (Frank McGrath) is the lonely, grizzled old cook who forms an attachment to four suddenly orphaned boys on the train. He is so devoted to them that he asks an aging spinster (Jocelyn Brando) to marry him so they can adopt the boys! She spurns him (nicely, of course) but falls for another bachelor on the train, a one-legged, yarn-spinning, landlocked sea captain (the McGoo character). They decide to get married and adopt the boys, and Wooster has to watch helplessly as his beloved children leave the train with their new parents. Nothing on television makes me cry, least of all a western series over 50 years old...but if you aren't crying after this one, you have no heart. This one should have won Emmys all around, with particular kudos to Frank McGrath and veteran TV writer Norman Jolly. McGrath is able to convey a breaking heart with a simple look in his eyes, and Jolly's deft touch (especially the "proposal" scene between McGrath and Brando) puts him at the top of his game. This is television at its best.
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