Actor David McLean was certainly no pretty-boy - And, he was almost pushing 40 when he took on the role of Tate, the handicapped gunslinger/bounty-hunter of the Old West.I found Tate to be one of the very few TV Westerns of its time that actually had a genuine gritty edge to the various tales that it told in the 13 episodes of its one and only season (1960).I think it was really too bad that Tate wasn't given a chance to at least run for a second season. This was a show that seemed to have a lot of potential. But, I guess that, at this point, the TV audience's interest in Westerns had waned considerably by the time 1960 had rolled around.Personally, I found a majority of the episodes of Tate to be very intense and quite riveting in the nature of their story-lines.And, of course, it was David McLean, as the title character, who was the driving force behind the gritty and keen realism of the show. McLean was certainly a man well-suited for his part.Tate, a veteran of the Civil War (where an injury rendered his left arm unusable), was a true loner and something of a drifter who, following the war, headed out on the road using his remarkable talents as an ace-gunfighter to earn a living and bring some semblance of justice to the Old West.Filmed in b&w, all of the 13 action-packed episodes of Tate had a running time of just 30 minutes.

"Tate" qualifies as one of the most off-beat western television dramas. This black & white oater with David McLean who gained fame as the Malboro man in cigarette commercials and also died from lung cancer. Think of the character that Sam Elliot played in "Thank You For Smoking," and you'll understand the comparison. "Tate" is a really neat show. The rugged, lonesome protagonist is a Civil War survivor, except his left arm hangs uselessly, blasted by an explosion in the war, and he wears his crippled limb in black leather sheathe with a strap around his neck. David McLean reminded me of Cliff Robertson. I don't know if Sergio Leone ever watched the show, probably didn't, but the hero dresses like a spaghetti western hero in a couple of episodes, sometimes even wearing a serape to conceal his lame limb. Naturally, he is super-fast on the draw. Each episode opens with Tate displaying his celerity with his six-gun. "Tate" belongs in the same league as "The Prisoner." Tate himself is a gunslinger and doesn't cry about his choice of profession or behave in a politically correct fashion. He has his own sense of uncompromising values, and he sticks with those values. He isn't an indiscriminate killer. You've got to be on the right side of the law and have some legal proof to your claim before Tate will accept your money, but once he accepts the money, he doesn't back down. He has no sidekick and carried a sawed-off shotgun as back-up. He doesn't call his horse by a nickname. The shows are half-hour in length and there is nothing gratuitous in them. They are concise, tight, and they do some pretty alarming things. In one episode, a jealous man kills a pretty saloon girl with a double-barreled shotgun. There is ZERO humor in the show. It's all about business. There are no recurring characters, except Tate. Tate is grim, stoic, to the point, and doesn't solicit sympathy.Harry Julian Fink who wrote and created "Dirty Harry," had a hand in the many rewrites of "Ice Station Zebra," penned John Wayne's "Big Jake" and "Cahill, U.S. Marshall," created the show and served as the script consultant. There are a few guest stars that you may recognize. One of the first shows in the series opens with an angry gunman going after Tate to kill him. Tate kills him before the second break in the narrative. The unknown actor who gets gunned down stone dead is none other than Robert Redford. Later, Redford shows up in another episode as an entirely different character who protects his ranch wife from Comanche Indians, principally the chief of the redskins, played by Leonard Nimoy of "Star Trek." In one episode, James Coburn plays a prisoner destined to hang for killing an entire family after the daughter of the family refused to marry him. Robert Culp plays a be-spectacled bounty hunter in another scene. Tate doesn't get a lot of sympathy. Warren Oates makes the mistake of talking when he should be shooting and Tate takes him out. Other than his limp arm, Tate shares no secrets, but he does point out that he has a mailing address, general delivery, Kansas City. There is a strain of Biblical quoting running through the show like a thread and usually the biggest Bible quoters are the biggest dastards. Meantime, Martin Landau plays a sheep herder in one episode and he gives a brilliant performance as a reformed Civil War raider that Tate is taking in for his war crimes. Some of the dialogue crackles. Once, when Culp's bounty killers gets the drop on Tate, he warns Tate that he can take him either as "pig or pork." For the record, Tate only gets kissed once in the entire 13 episodes by Julia Adams in the episode "The Mary Hardin Story." Indeed, there is a lot of violence, too. "Tate" emerges as a memorable, but short-lived western. Watch it!

This DVD contains all 13 episodes (all in B&W) of the western series "Tate" which ran as a summer replacement show on NBC in 1960. There was no pilot episode. The episode titles and their original air-dates are listed below. The ratings were not good enough to justify producing more episodes and bringing the series back in January 1961.A knock-off of the wire Paladin concept from "Have Gun Will Travel", the title character could be reached though a Kansas City post office box. Two rather weak gimmicks were used to distinguish it from other westerns; only the character's last name was used and he had only one useful arm. His other arm was badly injured in the Civil War and is shown sheathed in leather. Tate was a gunfighter played by David McLean (who was seen in commercials as The Marlboro Man and became an anti-smoking advocate before dying of lung cancer). Robert Redford made guest appearances in the "Comanche Scouts" and "The Bounty Hunter episodes, playing different characters.The Mary Hardin Story: 29 June 1960, Voices of the Town: 6 July 1960, A Lethal Pride: 20 July 1960, Tigrero: 3 August 1960, Comanche Scalps: 10 August 1960, Before Sunup: 17 August 1960,The Reckoning: 24 August 1960, The Gunfighters: 31 August 1960, Quiet After the Storm: 7 September 1960, The Return of Jessica Jackson: 14 September 1960.Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

"Tate" was a half hour western series that ran on NBC during the summer of 1960 as a summer replacement series. Summer replacement series generally ran 13 weeks and if the ratings for these replacement shows were sufficiently good they were brought back in January which was the start of the "second season" to replace series that had been canceled due to poor ratings."Tate" starred David McLean as the title character, a one-armed western bounty hunter who had lost the use of his left arm due to a wound suffered during the civil war. Since westerns were beginning to hit the skids in popularity gimmicks were being employed to give a new western series a unique quality that others lacked. In "Tate", the gimmick was that Tate was essentially one-armed and his useless left arm was entirely encased in black leather with the black gloved left hand protruding from a black leather sling. This gave a very ominous appearance to other characters in the series and to the audience alike. Tate was very fast on the draw and could still handle himself well in fights despite his handicap. The series was very pleasing for the most part although not very distinguished from any other western series. The two things I remember most (apart from the black leather and sling) was that this western was shot on tape rather than film and that Robert Redford appeared in two of the 13 episodes early in his distinguished career.All-in-all not a bad series but far from great.