"The Young Riders" lasted three seasons on ABC (1989-92) so it must have connected pretty well with its generally teenage target audience. Created to capitalize on the success of "Young Guns" (1988) it replaced Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, and Lou Diamond Phillips with lower budget young hunks Ty Miller, Stephen Baldwin, and Josh Brolin.
While lacking the intelligent scripting of "Bordertown" another 1989 revisionist Western, "The Young Riders" matched that Canadian series in the production design department. Both are a treat to watch just for the sets and the scenery.
"The Young Riders" is "set in the early days of the Pony Express," just before the Civil War which started in 1861. The Pony Express provided swifter than stagecoach mail service between Missouri and California through a system of single riders rushing between a string of almost 200 relief stations. The idea was to get about 75 miles of riding out of each man, exchanging his horse 5 times during his ride. The concept worked but lasted less than two years before it was replaced by the telegraph.
The series tried to get a boost from historical connections while not allowing historical accuracy to constrain it in any significant way. Rather than have the group of young riders be a bunch of average Joe's they give the viewer a young Buffalo Bill Cody (who actually rode for the Pony Express), Bill Hickok (who did not ride for the Pony Express), and in season two Jesse James (who was only 11 years old and probably didn't know that the Pony Express existed). If this sounds like an extremely lame idea then you are most likely older than Jesse.
Rounding out the hunks is a character named "The Kid" (Miller) who is technically the star judging by the amount of screen time he received. The non-hunks include Lou (Yvonne Suhor) - who is a girl pretending to be a boy, Buck Cross (Gregg Rainwater) who is an Indian with many wilderness skills; and Ike (Travis Fine) who was kicked in the head by an horse early in the series and exhibits many signs of dementia.
One would expect the life of a pony express rider to be a lonely one but these guys always (insert "every single day and night" here) seem to be just hanging around together, with little attention paid to transporting the mail. The idea of the system was for a rider to travel as light as possible and to avoid any confrontation or complication. Yet on the rare occasions when one of these youngsters actually manages to mount his/her horse with the mail they almost always manage to somehow get entangled in something more urgent than completing their route. Such is the penalty for skimping on imaginative screenwriters.
But if you don't know any better or if you can suspend disbelief many of the episodes can be entertaining. The first season was clearly the best. In large part because it included Melissa Leo, as a kind of den mother to the boys, who becomes a little too fond of young Cody. Leo was already a very polished actress and her scenes were generally the best ones in each episode.
Probably the best scene of the entire series was the first kiss between Miller and Suhor. It has enough charm and surprise to rank it among the top five television kisses of all time.
"The Body Count" issue: as you watch the pilot episode you will think that the violence level of the series is going to be in the style of "The A Team" (mega fighting and shooting but no real casualties). But it's not long before the thing morphs into another "The Rifleman", with the corpses piling up all around the ranch, the town, and the prairie. During its three-year run the young riders manage to kill more people in gunfights than died in all the Indian wars combined. Although the ultra-violence is pretty antiseptic it is often quite lame with a lot of stuff happening off scene. When they do attempt a big action sequence it is so cheaply staged that you will wish it had happened off screen.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
While lacking the intelligent scripting of "Bordertown" another 1989 revisionist Western, "The Young Riders" matched that Canadian series in the production design department. Both are a treat to watch just for the sets and the scenery.
"The Young Riders" is "set in the early days of the Pony Express," just before the Civil War which started in 1861. The Pony Express provided swifter than stagecoach mail service between Missouri and California through a system of single riders rushing between a string of almost 200 relief stations. The idea was to get about 75 miles of riding out of each man, exchanging his horse 5 times during his ride. The concept worked but lasted less than two years before it was replaced by the telegraph.
The series tried to get a boost from historical connections while not allowing historical accuracy to constrain it in any significant way. Rather than have the group of young riders be a bunch of average Joe's they give the viewer a young Buffalo Bill Cody (who actually rode for the Pony Express), Bill Hickok (who did not ride for the Pony Express), and in season two Jesse James (who was only 11 years old and probably didn't know that the Pony Express existed). If this sounds like an extremely lame idea then you are most likely older than Jesse.
Rounding out the hunks is a character named "The Kid" (Miller) who is technically the star judging by the amount of screen time he received. The non-hunks include Lou (Yvonne Suhor) - who is a girl pretending to be a boy, Buck Cross (Gregg Rainwater) who is an Indian with many wilderness skills; and Ike (Travis Fine) who was kicked in the head by an horse early in the series and exhibits many signs of dementia.
One would expect the life of a pony express rider to be a lonely one but these guys always (insert "every single day and night" here) seem to be just hanging around together, with little attention paid to transporting the mail. The idea of the system was for a rider to travel as light as possible and to avoid any confrontation or complication. Yet on the rare occasions when one of these youngsters actually manages to mount his/her horse with the mail they almost always manage to somehow get entangled in something more urgent than completing their route. Such is the penalty for skimping on imaginative screenwriters.
But if you don't know any better or if you can suspend disbelief many of the episodes can be entertaining. The first season was clearly the best. In large part because it included Melissa Leo, as a kind of den mother to the boys, who becomes a little too fond of young Cody. Leo was already a very polished actress and her scenes were generally the best ones in each episode.
Probably the best scene of the entire series was the first kiss between Miller and Suhor. It has enough charm and surprise to rank it among the top five television kisses of all time.
"The Body Count" issue: as you watch the pilot episode you will think that the violence level of the series is going to be in the style of "The A Team" (mega fighting and shooting but no real casualties). But it's not long before the thing morphs into another "The Rifleman", with the corpses piling up all around the ranch, the town, and the prairie. During its three-year run the young riders manage to kill more people in gunfights than died in all the Indian wars combined. Although the ultra-violence is pretty antiseptic it is often quite lame with a lot of stuff happening off scene. When they do attempt a big action sequence it is so cheaply staged that you will wish it had happened off screen.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.