Television series

Maverick

Name: Maverick
Genre: Action, Adventure, Western
Released: 1957
Cast: James Garner, Jack Kelly, Roger Moore, Robert Colbert

Maverick is a knowing wink inside a genre that usually plays it straight-faced: Bret and Bart travel the Old West armed with a deck of cards and their late father's dubious wisdom rather than fast guns. James Garner's droll cowardice made it TV's first great antihero cowboy — funnier, lazier, and far more likeable than every square-jawed marshal riding alongside it on ABC.

TVMaze rating

8.0

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The Rockford Files1974

Garner takes the same wry, reluctant-hero energy and drops it into 1970s LA — same charm, same aversion to violence, same delight in talking his way out of trouble instead of shooting his way out.

But It's a private-eye show, not a western, so you lose the frontier setting and poker tables entirely.

Support Your Local Sheriff!1969

James Garner again, this time playing a drifter who bluffs his way into being sheriff of a lawless boomtown — pure comic western swagger with a script that never lets the joke sag.

But It's broader and sillier than Maverick, with a plot built entirely around one long bluff rather than episodic variety.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid1969

The same easy charm and reluctance to be a real gunslinger, but with gorgeous Hollywood polish, a doomed romantic streak, and one of the great buddy chemistries in American film.

But It ends where Maverick would have found an exit — the tone turns elegiac and melancholy by the finish.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid poster

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Deadwood2004

Both are about hustlers, card players and confidence men carving out a living in a lawless frontier economy — Deadwood just refuses to let you laugh at the cost of it.

Same frontier, same gamblers and grifters and men making a living on their wits, but rendered as brutal, profane, Shakespearean prestige drama — the dark mirror of everything Maverick played for laughs.

But It is violent, bleak, and linguistically dense — nothing like the breezy, safe-for-Sunday-night tone Maverick trades in.

Blazing Saddles1974

Mel Brooks takes the western's self-seriousness and detonates it completely, with the kind of anarchic, fourth-wall-breaking silliness that Maverick only ever hinted at in its wildest episodes.

But It's crude, deliberately un-PC, and swings for gags rather than character — a very different comic register.

Gunsmoke1955

The straight-faced western Maverick was gently mocking — watching them side by side shows you exactly what joke Garner and company were in on.

But It plays everything completely earnestly; if you came to Maverick for the wit, this will feel slow and humorless by comparison.

The Wild Wild West1965no page yet

Same ABC western DNA but tipped into pulpy spy-fi adventure, with gadgets, mad scientists, and a hero who's equal parts gunslinger and secret agent, decades before steampunk had a name.

But The tone is action-adventure rather than card-table cunning, so the con-artist wit of Maverick mostly disappears.

Cheyenne1955no page yet

ABC's earlier flagship western, made by the same studio machine — a good look at the sturdy, sincere frontier hero Maverick was quietly built to subvert.

But It's a much more conventional adventure series, with none of the roguish self-awareness that makes Maverick sing.

Support Your Local Gunfighter1971no page yet

James Garner's other great con-man western comedy, playing a fast-talking impostor gunfighter who bluffs an entire town — practically a spiritual sequel to the show itself.

But It's a lesser, more slapstick cousin of Support Your Local Sheriff, and feels a touch thin stretched to feature length.

Bonanza1959

A hugely popular contemporary western built on family loyalty and moral seriousness — worth seeing as the sturdy, sentimental opposite number to Maverick's cheerful cynicism.

But It's earnest where Maverick is sly, and its hour-long melodrama can feel heavy after Maverick's light touch.

My Little Chickadee1940no page yet

It's the direct comic ancestor: a con-artist western comedy that proved crooked charm could carry a frontier story before Maverick ever dealt a card.

W.C. Fields and Mae West play a card-sharp con man and a scheming saloon woman conning their way across the frontier — the exact rascally, wisecracking spirit Maverick would inherit seventeen years later.

But It's a much creakier, more theatrical style of comedy, built on vaudeville rhythms rather than the sitcom pacing Maverick uses.

Dealt2017no page yet

Maverick's whole charm rests on the fantasy of the unbeatable card man; Dealt shows you a real one, and the story turns out to be about something deeper than the trick.

A documentary about Richard Turner, a blind card mechanic whose sleight-of-hand skill is so precise sighted players can't detect it — real proof that the card tricks Maverick played for laughs are actually humanly possible.

But It's a quiet, personal character study about disability and obsession, not a rollicking adventure — a very different kind of pleasure.