Tony Robinson's Wild West

In the first episode, The Last Stand, Tony looks at the clashes between the native Indian tribes and Americans, namely the famous ‘Last Stand’ of General Custer at Little Big Horn. Whilst this was the one and only battle the Sioux ever won against the Americans, it led to the total destruction of their people and culture, from which they never recovered.

This episode focuses on two of Tony's obsessions from his childhood love of Westerns - cowboys and gun slinging outlaws. It also asks the question, who were the real winners of the West? Tony starts by looking at the birth and relatively short life of the cowboy in American culture (they arrive post-Civil War in 1865 and are becoming redundant before the end of the century) and then focus on the lives of the famous outlaws, including Calamity Jane, Jesse James and Wild Bill Hickok. He also tells the story of the civilizing of the West and the arrival of thousands of farmers who gradually took over the land and created the mid-Western mindset of modern rural America.

The final episode focuses on the death of the frontier, the myth making that created the legends we all know and love, and the people who were written out of the history of the West. Using Buffalo Bill's rise and fall as an example, Tony looks at how a generation of Western pioneers had the skill and vision to create their own legends and invent stories which - thanks to Hollywood - have become ingrained in our collective psyches. He also looks at the remarkable story of Geronimo and the way in which Buffalo Bill's Wild West show fixed our opinion of the Indians. Finally, Tony finds out how the West was whitened by learning about the story of black cowboys and the part they played in the cattle drives from the South.