Maverick: The Complete Series: The Western Classic Receives an Impressive HD Upgrade (Blu-ray)

The Show:

Back in the 1950s, Westerns were a regular staple of television, with numerous hit shows popping up throughout the decade, including "Bonanza," "Gunsmoke," "Cheyenne," "Rawhide," and "The Rifleman." Another entry in this "Golden Age" of the genre was "Maverick," which used the somewhat simple premise of a pair of traveling gamblers who go about getting into misadventures as they ply their trade, a foundation leading to another success that had the show lasting an impressive five seasons (124 episodes).

While the show has been available on DVD for over a decade, Warner Bros. has seen fit to give the popular program a remarkable Blu-ray upgrade, and while there isn't much in the way of special features (a handful of episodes come with their original commercials), it must be said that a lot of time and care went into this gorgeous new set, as evident by the individualized cases for each of the five seasons, with no stacked discs. With its 70th anniversary right around the corner, there's no better time to go back and have a look at the classic show that entertained millions, one that even occasionally beat "The Ed Sullivan Show" during the peak of its popularity. Can this little Western outing still deliver the goods nearly seven decades later?

To go into just a little more detail on the set-up, the first three seasons revolve around Bret Maverick (James Garner) and his brother Bart (Jack Kelly), expert poker players who always seem to find themselves getting into one odd situation or another, whether it's them getting robbed and having to retrieve their money, or getting involved in some kind of scheme/business deal with friends, a woman, or some shady folks, typically putting them in a tight spot that they have to find their way out of. For season four, Bret is replaced by their cousin Beau (Roger Moore), with he and Bart continuing the series of misadventures until less than halfway through, where Beau gets replaced with another Maverick brother, Brent (Robert Colbert), for the remainder of the season. Finally, for the last season, it drops down to solely focusing on Bart.

To be perfectly blunt, yes, the show does have a fairly standard go-to batch of foundations on which to build their episodes, so you can pretty much set your watch by the above happening on each outing. That said, in a somewhat startling twist, it doesn't really have much of an impact on how fun the show is. Yes, the boys get robbed a lot and stumble into a lot of troubling situations, but the stories are typically engaging enough, while providing plenty of thrills along the way so as to make them quite entertaining to watch. Shows like this never needed particularly complicated plots to make them work, but rather just enough so as to give these roaming gamblers another pickle to get mixed up in (and out of within 50-ish minutes).

Of course, another reason it worked as well as it did was because of its fantastic cast, headlined primarily by James Garner and Jack Kelly (with brief runs by Roger Moore and Robert Colbert coming later). On top of them, the show had quite the impressive list of guest stars, which included many big names and others who would go on to become huge stars, including Clint Eastwood, Louise Fletcher, Lee Van Cleef, George Kennedy, Slim Pickens, John Carradine, Buddy Ebsen, and Adam West, giving the show no shortage of incredible acting talent across its five-season run.

Overall, "Maverick" may not have had the most intricate or original stories, but it never really needed to in order to deliver the fun, thrills, and entertainment that it wanted to. For five years, its eager audience tuned in to see what kind of trouble these boys could possibly get up to next, and how they would untangle themselves from it, which worked quite well, at least as far as bringing viewers back for more over the course of its 124-episode run. With it making its Blu-ray debut, fans can now enjoy it all over again in stunning HD, while newcomers can discover it in the best quality it's ever been presented, ultimately making it an easy recommendation for the show's admirers, Western connoisseurs, or for anyone simply looking for a compelling & exciting classic to binge.

Video/Audio:

"Maverick: The Complete Series" comes to Blu-ray in 1.33:1, 1080p High Definition transfers of remarkable quality. The show has been beautifully restored, giving you sharp & clear pictures throughout the five seasons that perfectly highlight its various Western details. Likewise, the 2.0 Mono DTS-HD MA soundtracks are outstanding, giving you all of the dialogue, sound effects, and music in excellent quality. Overall, Warner Bros. has done a wonderful job in both areas for the classic show's Blu-ray debut.

Special Features:

Five episodes are presented with original vintage commercials as seen during their initial broadcasts on ABC Television.

Conclusion:

"Maverick: The Complete Series" may re-use the same basic foundations quite often for its main characters' series of misadventures, but it surprisingly never ends up detracting from how fun, exciting, and entertaining the show is, with no small part of that being thanks to its fantastic cast & impressive array of guests starts, ultimately making for an impressive Western that holds up quite well, even after nearly 70 years.

Score: 3.5/5

Now available on Blu-ray.

Follow me on Twitter @BeckFilmCritic.