Bring 'Em Back Alive was a CBS adventure television series starring Bruce Boxleitner, Cindy Morgan and Ron O Neal. Boxleitner plays the pith-helmeted Great White Hunter Frank Buck, who here (unlike the real Frank Buck on whose life this series was very loosely based) works out of the Raffles Hotel bar in Singapore during the 1930s fighting all kinds of bad guys in pre-war Malaya.
Bring 'Em Back Alive ran for 17 episodes in 1982-83. Even though it was just a short-lived adventure series, it had fairly complicated plots and even the bad guys got some Character Development.
Bring 'Em Back Alive contains examples of:
- Affably Evil: G.B. Vonturgo
- The Alcatraz: In "Escape from Kampoon", Buck and H.H. help an American agent free her secret contact from Kampoon prison—-an Asian version of Devil's Island.
- Bald of Evil: Vonturgo again
- Bring It Back Alive
- Closed Circle: In "Storm Warning", Buck escapes being murdered aboard a ship, then is forced to wait out a storm with his shipmates, one of whom is the would-be killer.
- Dueling Shows: It was created to compete with Tales of the Gold Monkey, as both shows were quickly green lit to capitalize on the success of Raiders of the Lost Ark.
- Great White Hunter: Frank Buck
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: While on a safari in "The Chase", Buck and a photographer are tracked by a tribe of hunters led by a sadistic escaped convict.
- Jungle Opera
- Sex Slave: In "The Shadow Women of Chung-Tai", Buck is drugged and his date abducted by a notorious flesh peddler.
- Two-Fisted Tales
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: Very loosely based on the life of real life Great White Hunter Frank Buck.