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Narrative
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alt title(s): Western Any story set in the American West during the frontier era (from about 1840 to 1890).
Perhaps surprisingly, the Western genre is actually Older Than They Think, having its roots in the 19th century "dime novels", meaning that like the gangster films of The Thirties it was usually pretty much contemporary with its source material. In fact no less a figure than Wild Bill Hickok was already a star in dozens of embellished stories by the time he died in 1876. By the turn of the century a lot of the stock Western tropes had already been established in popular imagination.
Westerns made a very early leap to film with The Great Train Robbery in 1903, and remained popular throughout the next few decades, though their golden age truly arrived in the 1930s.
Enormously popular on TV and in the movies in the 1950s and 1960s: Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Rawhide, Branded, The Wild Wild West, Have Gun Will Travel, The Rifleman, The Big Valley...
Some of the more recent successful TV examples were Grizzly Adams and Dr Quinn Medicine Woman.
Common plotlines include a Cattle Drive, a Train Job, and a Bank Robbery.
There's a Wanted Poster on every wall.
In recent decades the genre was only seen on TV in the form of its hybrid child the Space Western, but it is now enjoying something of a revival with the success of Deadwood in 2004. Two networks, according to the British Radio Times, have new series in development.
For series that use Western tropes but are set in the modern day, see New Old West.
A subtrope of Period Piece. See also Western Characters and Spaghetti Western. Cross The Western with Science Fiction, and you get Cattle Punk.
ExamplesFilm
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