Television Review

Lawmen: Bass Reeves • Paramount+ — a true grit western capturing the spirit of a forgotten hero

The story of legendary lawman Bass Reeves, one of the greatest frontier heroes and one of the first Black Deputy US Marshals west of the Mississippi River.

“All the Westerns have been made,” the great actor Robert Ryan once said, while discussing Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1969). “The only difference is style.” His remark in part points to the rapid fade of the Western movie that started in the late-1960s. This near extinction was caused by many factors, among them modern American culture’s obsession with the new and shiny. This point of view sees Westerns as “old stuff” to be forgotten in museum attics. For modern, supposedly superior, sensibilities, the genre has no new stories to tell, nothing new to say.

Ryan was almost right, but not quite. As this fan is glad to say, not all the Westerns have been made. There are new stories out there to tell and, occasionally, interest in the genre rises to tell them, as is happening right…