Flint McCullough, Charlie Wooster, Seth Adams........

Wagons Roll!......

It was a sort of picaresque adventure. The ones like Gunsmoke and Wyatt Earp situated in some sort of frontier town were much more glum in nature. before long there was always a lynching party cos everybody was SO bored with the story.

On Wagon Train, the Indians could always be relied on to liven things up a bit with a surprise attack. Later in the series the stories got very silly. One week they nicked the entire plot of Great Expectations.

After about five years they got really desperate and rebooted the format, called it Riverboat with Darren McGavin - and the stories took place on a Riverboat instead of a wagon train. However to the trained eye, the narratives had the same static quality.