Bret Maverick returns in the single season of Bret Maverick. The series aired over the 1981 and 1982 season, The Rockford Files had wrapped in in 1980. James Garner returns as Bret but this time he's sort of settling down. He wins a saloon in the town of Sweetwater in Arizona Territory and buys a ranch nearby. The set puts the 18 episodes on 5 DVDs and they look fine. Much better looking than the Dan August set which had seven 45 min shows per disc.
Bret's majority partner in the saloon is the ex-sheriff played by Ed Bruce, Bret's ranch foreman is an old coot played by Richard Hamilton. The newspaper is run by a woman in pants, played by Darleen Carr, her feisty printer is played by Priscilla Morrill. Ramon Bieri plays the banker, John Shearin plays the ignorant and arrogant sheriff, Stuart Margolin plays a local crazy guy, Jack Garner, James's real life brother, plays the bartender. A few random guests stars include Richard Moll, Kirk Cameron, Hector Elizondo, Geoffrey Lewis, Dub Taylor, Ross Hagen, Jack Kelly, Art LaFleur, Monte Markham, Ed Nelson, Simon Oakland, Keye Luke, William Hootkins, William Sanderson and Sid Haig.
I thought it was more fun than the last series of Maverick that I saw. It did fairly well in the rating but not enough for the network to continue on. At the end of the season they were planning on replacing Bret at the saloon with Jack Kelly, Ed had sold his share of the saloon to a madam and he was sheriff again and that would give Bret a chance to visit other towns. That was part of the fun of the original series, you never knew where Bret was going to be from week to week. In general I was glad to have seen them and I would watch it over again someday.
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