Bearcats! was a short-lived (13 episodes plus a two-hour pilot movie) 1971 CBS series created by Douglas Heyes, a Western set in the year 1914.
Hank Brackett (Rod Taylor) and Johnny Reach (Dennis Cole) were freelance adventurers who drove around the southwestern U.S. in a Stutz Bearcat
sports car instead of riding horses. The two of them took on problems that no one else could solve, and their fee was a blank check – on the theory that if you could put a dollar value on your troubles, you really didn't need their help.
The early 20th-century setting allowed the writers to add relatively modern elements (such as the aforementioned Bearcat, oil companies, Mexican revolutionaries, Imperial German spies and World War I, and belt-fed machine guns) to the usual Wild West milieu, although the series ended up being something of an Anachronism Stew anyway – for instance, one episode featured a Renault FT-18 tank (in reality the tank was not invented until 1915, and the Renault FT did not appear until 1917), another a Curtiss JN-4 biplane (first flown in 1915) in Mexican Air Force colors (Curtiss "Jennies" were exported only to Britain). The show's continuity was also a little soft from one episode to another, particularly with regard to those Mexican revolutionaries – one week, Hank and Johnny were shown working with the Mexican government against the rebels, while the next, they were siding with the rebels against the corrupt Mexican government, and so on.
Despite all that, the show was quite fun to watch.
Tropes:
- Cool Car: The show is named after it.
- Pilot Movie: Powderkeg
- Raised by Natives: Johnny Reach had been raised by Indians.
- '70s Hair:
- On the two leads, and many of the guest stars as well. Actual 1914 hairstyles were nowhere to be seen.
- Fashion wasn't that much better.
- Twilight of the Old West: Set in 1914.
