Taylor Sheridan at a promotional photoshoot for his debut novel, 'How Not To Die in Prison' Courtesy of Simon & Schuster/Emerson Miller By Samuel Williamson Published Aug 23, 2026, 11:32 PM EDT Sam is a Senior Writer for Collider. His love for movies, TV shows, and books stretches back to his early childhood and has grown exponentially with every passing year. Lucky for him, this love grew into a career in writing. Whether he's rambling for the umpteenth time about the works of Sam Raimi and Stephen King, or he's writing about the latest and greatest low-budget movies, you better believe that with every word, Sam feels a profound joy in his work. Aside from being a movie fan, Sam has also made a few of his own. His love for movies has vomited itself back out and onto the screen in the form of his own independent films, including the comedic genre-benders At Sundown I Shoot Your Spurs and Night of the Pizza Demons . Sam has spent the last few years practicing his hand at screenwriting but is currently gearing up to shoot his next project. Outside of movies, Sam loves playing guitar, jamming with his band, spinning records, reading, jogging, and whipping up new recipes in his kitchen. He resides in Little Rock, Arkansas. Sign in to your Collider account Add Us Add on Google Preferred Source Google News Summary Generate a summary of this story Like Like follow Follow followed Followed Listen Thread Log in Here is a fact-based summary of the story contents: Try something different: Show me the facts Explain it like I’m 5 Give me a lighthearted recap There are loads of classic Western TV shows that have remained favorites for fans of the genre to this day, but no old-school series is cooler than Wanted Dead or Alive . Long before Taylor Sheridan helped turn the modern Western into one of television’s biggest genres again with shows like Yellowstone , Steve McQueen was already playing the kind of morally complicated, effortlessly cool cowboy audiences still gravitate toward today.
Yeah, Bonanza is great, and people definitely love Gunsmoke , but how do you get better than 94 episodes of McQueen taking in outlaws, helping out his fellow man, and just being a total badass? This series dropped the typical sentimental feel that so many Western shows come with, abandoned the idea of goodhearted, never-to-do-wrong cowboys, and gave us Josh Randall, a cold-hearted bounty hunter. This series does have its nice moments here and there, but by and large, Wanted Dead or Alive is a killer show with just about the coolest cowboy that the Western genre would know for quite some time .
If you’re tired of the same old hokey Western shows that have been around for decades now, then maybe it’s time you shook up your viewing habits and found a different program that isn’t always so nice. Maybe it’s time you fired up Wanted Dead or Alive ! This series ran from 1958-1961 for only three seasons, but during that time period, it managed to chalk up 94 episodes (a time when seasons for every TV show were much larger). The show starred Steve McQueen in his first big role, made him the king of cool, and is the vehicle that he used to break into eventually becoming a movie star.
More than six decades later, Josh Randall’s hard-edged antihero still feels surprisingly modern, especially in an era where television Westerns have once again embraced complicated cowboys who don’t fit neatly into ideas of good and bad. If movies like Bullitt and The Great Escape are your jam…