Reviews

Rick and AJ Simon are brothers. They're as different as night and day. AJ is college educated and somewhat of a preppy type. Rick is laid back, somewhat scruffy and has been described as disreputable. That's not really fair but he doesn't exactly try NOT to earn that reputation. They're very different but they're a lot alike, too. Both are as honest as the day is long. However their methods of doing things are apt to be completely opposite. AJ's by the book and Rick likes to wing it and do things outside the rules.

Marlowe is Rick's dog - a lovable and harmless mutt who is hopeless when it comes to helping them.

Their Mom, Cecelia, appears briefly in most episodes - to scold, encourage, help or bring them a client. Both boys say "how high" when Mom says "jump".

Janet Fowler and her father, Myron, run the detective agency across the street. Janet is AJ's ex-girlfriend or fiancée. The boys do, on occasion, steal clients from Myron which does not exactly endear them to him.

When Janet left the series she was replaced by Tim Reid as Detective Downtown Brown. When he left the series he was replaced by Joan McMurtry as Detective Abby Marsh who was definitely not very fond of the boys. At least at first. She was just the opposite in temperament as "Town" was - at least as far as the boys were concerned.

Lancer is about a man, Murodoch Lancer, who emigrated from Scotland in the mid-1800s, who lives on a 100,000 acre ranch where he raises cattle and horses.

When land pirates kill his foreman and seriously wound him he sends for his two sons whom he has not seen in many years.

Scott,portrayed by Wayne Maunder,is somewhere around 25, and living in Boston where he was raised by his maternal grandfather after the older man took him east when his mother died either from a fever or from childbirth. Scott served in a cavalry unit during the war and rose to the rank of Lieutenant while serving under General Phil Sheridan.

Johnny, portrayed by James Stacy, is a few years younger. Known as Johnny Madrid in certain parts of the country, Johnny's mother was Murdoch's second wife - a Mexican woman named Maria. Johnny, unlike Scott, was born at Lancer and spent approximately the first two years of his life there. For reasons known only to herself Maria deserted her husband and left Lancer with Johnny in the company of "some sort of gambler" according to Murdoch's ward, Teresa O'Brien. Johnny is saved from a firing squad by the Pinkerton agent hired to find him.

The brothers know nothing about each other's existence until they are "introduced" to each other by Teresa when they arrive on the same stage in Morro Coyo - a usually sleepy little village near the ranch.

After a rough start the boys, Murdoch and Teresa eventually become a close-knit family and share the trials and tribulations of cattle ranching and the occasional visitor from the past - be it Johnny's past as a gunfighter, Scott's past as a soldier or scion of Boston society or, occasionally, Murdoch's own past.

It is similar to, but definitely not a clone of, Bonanza. For one thing we have no idea if Murdoch is still married to Maria or if she is dead. Johnny doesn't talk about his mother much outside of the pilot episode and Cut The Wolf Loose.