Like the original Lonesome Dove series, i'd say this one is about hardship, luck, and the diversity of characters that can fill up wild harsh times. The humour is really good and mostly revolves around the naivety of people in such dangerous unknown territory. The cast is the strongest thing about this series. I was expecting everyone to be attempting to fill in the traditional roles of a prequel (immitating the successful original's characters and mood) but this series has acting and characters that I've remembered for years after watching it as being all uniquely bizarre and also weirdly believable. The storytelling has a nice patience to it. It's a shame this isn't better known; I've read the original Lonesome Dove novel and loved it, and the same goes for the Robert Duvall Series (watch that first if u haven't already - it's really strong!), I enjoyed Return to lonesome Dove also but not as much as it gets a bit melodramatic and loses some of it's humour by that series. I've vaguely attempted to watch some of the other televised Lonesome Dove spinoffs/sequels (The Outlaw Years, namely) and couldn't get into them at all, rejecting them as crap pretty quickly. But Dead Man's Walk is a really nice thoughtful watch.

This is a wonderful evocation of its period. The writing, direction and especially the acting are all above average -- even David Arquette does a reasonably successful job of playing a 30-years younger Robert Duvall-as-Gus-McCrae. He may be imitating Duvall's performance somewhat, but he does a decent job -- it's quite believable that this Gus McCrae developed into the later one.Jonny Lee Miller -- so tight-lipped it's sometimes unbelievable -- does a good job with a thankless role -- "Corporal" Woodrow Call, as the young Clara dubs him (to Gus's consernation).Jennifer Garner played Clara very well. Her flirtatious flippancy is both alluring and endearing -- and only a little annoying.Edward James Olmos is perfect, as usual. He's one of my favorite actors, has been since Zoot Suit.The costuming and setting are exemplary and very true to the pre-Mexican War Southwest.The only technical/historical problem I have with this film is the weaponry. The flintlock muskets and rifles don't sound correct, and don't discharge nearly enough smoke. (SEMI-SPOILER COMING) No firing squad would shoot with bayonets attached (they detract from accuracy). But the mixture of Colt's Patent Revolvers (tm) and single-shot pistols was correct.Of course this work pales in comparison to the book -- even the excellent Lonesome Dove was no match for the book. But this is far superior to the L-D sequel, Streets of Laredo.

The author of the book "Dead Man's Walk" also wrote the screenplay for this film, which is obvious when one sees how closely the film adheres to the book. Although I have read the book in question, it didn't curtail my enjoyment of the movie. One notices how closely the young actors portraying Gus McRae and Woodrow Call (David Arquette and Johny Lee Miller) resemble older versions of the same characters as actualized by Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. My guess is that making that resemblance a fact was of paramount importance to the filmmakers, as the primary audience for "Dead Man's Walk" has already seen "Lonesome Dove" and would be disappointed if Arquette's performance didn't recall Duvall's and Miller's work wasn't reminiscent of Jones'.Although it may have been primarily a marketing decision, the strong resemblance between young and old Gus and Call works for me and, oddly enough, binds the two miniseries together.May we now see a miniseries based on McMurtry's second prequel, "Comanche Moon"?

In this prequel to "Lonesome Dove" based on the book by Larry McMurtry, we find a young Woodrow Call and Augustus Macrae just starting out as Texas Rangers and beginning to become men.David Arquette is fantastic as the young Macrae and really captures the gestures and mannerisms that Robert Duvall put too such good use in Lonesome Dove. I was very impressed with his performance and had no trouble believing that he was the young Gus Macrae.Johnny Lee Miller does not fare as well as the young Woodrow Call and it is hard to believe that this is the character that Tommy Lee Jones played in the original as there is little that ties their acting styles to the same role.Visually, this is quite well done and comes the closest to Lonesome Dove in grittiness and open plain shots. The young Rangers are surrounded by eccentric characters played with great aplomb by the likes of Brian Dennehy, F.Murray Abraham, Keith Carradine, Harry Dean Stanton and Edward James Olmos.Strong acting throughout and a crackling good story hilight this worthy sequel and it makes a fine addition to the lore that is Lonesome Dove.