The Young Riders - The Complete First Season

Product Description Saddle up for fun and adventure with "The Young Riders"! Set in the early days of the Pony Express, the series tells the fictionalized story of a group of young riders for the express in Sweetwater, Kansas, who just happen to include a couple of dudes who would one day go down in real-life history as two of the west?s most notorious names: "Buffalo Bill" Cody (Stephen Baldwin) and "Wild Bill" Hickock (Josh Brolin). In charge of the bunch is ex-Texas ranger and all-around eccentric teaspoon hunter (Anthony Zerbe). See how they all put the wild in the wild, wild west in this complete first season of "The Young Riders." Amazon.com The premise behind this revisionist Western from creator and supervising producer Ed Spielman ( Kung Fu) was novel enough: veteran character actor Anthony Zerbe ran a Pony Express station, and counted among his diverse group of riders such future legends of the Old West as Wild Bill Hickok (Josh Brolin) and Buffalo Bill Cody (Stephen Baldwin; Christopher Pettiet would join them in the series' third and final season as a youthful Jesse James). Ostensibly, the Riders' job was to deliver the U.S. mail, but somehow, adventure kept intervening, and the Riders rallied valiantly to defend escaped slaves ("Black Ulysses"), give testimony in the case of a stagecoach massacre ("Speak No Evil"), and even deal with their own growing fame ("Ten-Cent Hero," which addresses the pulp mythologizing of Hickok). The comely housemother Emma Shannon, played by Melissa Leo, departed the show after this season for more modern pastures on Homicide: Life on the Street. A host of notable guest stars supported the uniformly fine cast, including Cynthia Nixon ("Gathering Clouds") and Chris Penn ("Matched Pair"). The lack of any extras is something of a disappointment. -- --Paul Gaita