The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.
Bruce Campbell's chin under a cowboy hat: a Harvard-educated lawyer turned bounty hunter, an outlaw gang to catch, and a mysterious golden Orb granting superhuman strength. Fox gave it one Friday-night season — viewers voted to save it in TV Guide's poll, and Fox canceled it anyway. The cult never let go.
Jeffrey Boam and Carlton Cuse created The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. for Fox, and it premiered August 27, 1993 — a two-hour pilot plus 26 more episodes, running through May 20, 1994. Set in 1893, it follows Brisco County, Jr., a Harvard-educated lawyer turned bounty hunter, hired by wealthy industrialists to bring in the outlaw John Bly and his gang. Bruce Campbell auditioned five times for the role — once impressing the room with a standing flip — and played Brisco with exactly the right wink. At the show's center sat the Orb: a mysterious golden sphere pulled from a mine, its rods granting superhuman strength. Cuse later said it represented "faith."
The show was a strange alchemy — Western bounty-hunting, science fiction, and what would later be called steampunk — airing Fridays at 8 p.m. on Fox, which that same fall made it the lead-in to another new series premiering behind it at 9: The X-Files, which debuted September 10, 1993. One Friday night, two future cult classics; only one survived its first season. The two-hour pilot drew 10.4 million viewers, but the ratings slid as the weeks wore on.
Fox canceled it after a single season — even though it won TV Guide's "Save Our Shows" reader poll with 34.7% of the vote. The cult never let go: Warner released the complete series on DVD in 2006, with cast commentary and documentaries, and the show settled into its permanent role as television's great one-season what-if — too weird to rate, too loved to forget.
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