Television series

Gunsmoke

Name: Gunsmoke
Genre: Action, Adventure, Western
Released: 1955
Cast: James Arness, Milburn Stone, Amanda Blake, Ken Curtis, Dennis Weaver

Gunsmoke is the granddaddy of TV Westerns — twenty seasons of Marshal Matt Dillon keeping order in Dodge City through unhurried, character-first storytelling rather than serialized plotting. It's slower and more moral than modern shows, built on weekly parables about justice, decency and frontier community. Ideal for anyone who wants comfort-food Western drama with real craft and patience behind it.

TVMaze rating

7.8

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Bonanza1959

If Gunsmoke is Dodge City's law, Bonanza is the Ponderosa's family — same era, same network rivalry, but built around a father and three sons instead of a badge. Warmer, endlessly comforting.

But Even talkier and slower-paced than Gunsmoke, with more moralizing and less actual gunplay.

Lonesome Dove

The miniseries that took everything Gunsmoke did across twenty seasons and compressed it into one devastating, novelistic epic about aging cattlemen watching the West close in on them.

But It's heavier and sadder — myth curdling into elegy, not weekly comfort viewing.

Deadwood2004

Take Dodge City, strip away the decency, and you get Deadwood — profane, filthy, brilliant, and obsessed with the same question of how law gets built from nothing.

But Shakespearean dialogue and constant profanity make it a much harder watch than Gunsmoke's plain talk.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Dragnet1951

Both run on the same weekly morality engine — a lawman imposing order on chaos — just relocated from frontier dust to postwar city streets.

Same show, different hat: a stoic officer of the law walks into a messy situation, applies a code, and restores order by the end of the episode — just swap horses for a sedan and Dodge City for LA.

But Its flat, just-the-facts delivery and studio artificiality can feel stiff next to Gunsmoke's more textured performances.

Rawhide1959

A contemporary rival to Gunsmoke, trading the town marshal for a cattle drive boss — same episodic morality tales, dustier scenery, and a young Clint Eastwood cutting his teeth.

But The drive's forward momentum means less of Dodge City's sense of community and recurring characters.

The Rifleman1958no page yet

Half-hour, tightly wound morality plays about a widowed father raising a son on the frontier — Gunsmoke's decency distilled into something faster and punchier.

But Thinner scope than Gunsmoke's ensemble town — mostly just the father-son dynamic, episode after episode.

Wagon Train1957

An anthology on wheels — new guest stars and stories each week as a wagon train crosses the plains, echoing Gunsmoke's parade of moral dilemmas dropped into one setting.

But The rotating cast means less of the deep character loyalty Gunsmoke built with Kitty, Doc and Chester.

Longmire2012

Swap Dodge City for modern Wyoming and Matt Dillon for a laconic sheriff, and you've basically got Gunsmoke's soul relocated to pickup trucks and casinos.

But Modern pacing and serialized mystery plots are a different rhythm than Gunsmoke's stand-alone weekly cases.

Little House on the Prairie1974

Same frontier, same small-town texture, but seen through a family's hearth rather than a lawman's badge — gentler, warmer, just as devoted to decency under hardship.

But Sentimental where Gunsmoke is stoic; expect tears over gunfights.

The Virginian1962

Another long-running NBC Western with a ranch foreman standing in for Dillon's marshal, notable as one of the first hour-long Westerns to follow Gunsmoke's lead into longer storytelling.

But Less iconic and less remembered today — a solid comfort watch, not essential viewing.

Stagecoach1939

John Ford's film effectively wrote the moral vocabulary — decent outlaws, civilizing towns, quiet codes of honor — that Gunsmoke spent twenty years dramatizing weekly.

This is the film that built the grammar Gunsmoke inherited — the outlaw with a code, the frontier town's uneasy mix of respectability and violence, shot with a clarity that still holds up.

But Its pace and black-and-white style will feel genuinely old, not just old-fashioned, even to Gunsmoke fans.

The West1996

It fills in everything Gunsmoke's fiction smoothed over — the same frontier, but with moral clarity replaced by historical mess.

A sprawling Ken Burns documentary telling the real, uglier history behind the myth Gunsmoke was selling — land grabs, violence and hard economics instead of tidy weekly justice.

But It's long, factual and unsentimental — nothing like Gunsmoke's comfort-viewing rhythm, and often genuinely bleak.