One of the most sought after cult shows ever made, traded on low grade second and third generation tapes since the day it was cancelled and in high demand on file trading sites in more recent days, The Adventures of Brisco County Junior is finally making an appearance on DVD. All twenty seven episodes of the Bruce Campbell starring western / sci-fi / comedy / action serial are here spread over seven discs with an eighth disc handling an assortment of bonus features.
Commissioned when the Fox network was just beginning to rise – the show launched in 1993 and was paired with Fox’s other new genre offering, The X Files – and before the network had developed their now notoriously quick trigger finger for cancellations of shows they had commissioned specifically to be something different from what was offered on other networks, Brisco was an oddity from day one, one that never quite found an audience but was nevertheless kept on the air for a full twenty seven episode season.
Following the runaway success of the serial based Indiana Jones films Fox executives approached Jeffrey Boam and Carlton Cuse fresh from working on the script of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and asked them to develop a similarly serial based television show for Fox. After researching the classic old serials of yore the duo realized that the large majority fell either into the western or sci-fi camps and decided to fuse the two into one, Brisco County Junior being the result.
The Evil Dead’s Bruce Campell stars as the titular Brisco County Junior, the son of a legendary law man who has turned away from his Harvard law education to become a bounty hunter and roam the earth looking for ‘the coming thing’. Brisco is a dreamer, through and through, and one who not only recognizes that the old west is coming to an end but who eagerly anticipates whatever the new century may bring. Brisco’s aimless life comes to an end, however, when his father – the legendary Brisco County Sr (R. Lee Ermey) – is gunned down by notorious gangster John Bly and his gang of outlaws. With Bly on the loose Brisco is hired by a consortium of wealthy ‘robber-barons’ – wealthy tycoons who control all the industry worth controlling – to bring Bly and his gang down, fearing their impact on business. Things are complicated further when Chinese railway workers unearth a mysterious metallic orb of unknown origin with immense powers, a device Bly correctly realizes could make him a king among men and which Brisco is determined to keep from him. Throw into the mix the consortium’s uptight liason, a sultry saloon singer, and a crazed inventor – played with maniacal glee by The Addams Family’s bug-eyed John Astin – and you have the basic mix of characters.
The Adventures of Brisco County Junior is a show that delights in its anachronisms and in the excesses afforded to it by its serial roots. Series writers were instructed to aim for a tone ‘just under over the top’ and they keep Brisco leaping from cliff hanger to cliff hanger, littering dialogue with innuendo and double meaning, and dropping references to modern life – Dunkin Donuts, drive through restaurants, and Elvis Presley all make sideways appearances – all while taking full advantage of the last remaining western sets and ranches in Hollywood. And while western and sci-fi tropes are the most dominant the show certainly wastes no opportunity to work in other elements, an underground clan of kung fu fighters and a roaming band of land pirates standing as prime examples.
The show’s failure to find an audience, while sad, is not particularly surprising. There has never been another show quite like Brisco County Junior on television, with only John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China or earlier TV effort Wild Wild West springing to mind as projects with a similar tone and genre mashing style, and television has always been a medium that thrives on the familiar while throwing the unusual out to the dogs. This is a show that simply doesn’t fit neatly into any genre or demographic categories and as such it simply slipped away thanks to a network that didn’t know quite how to market it and an audience that preferred to stick with what they already knew. Perhaps it will now find the wider audience it deserves thanks to the DVD release.
The DVD package, while not perfect, is very strong. Every minute of every episode is included here with a decent range of extras. Campbell and co-creator Carlton Cuse provide a commentary on the double-length pilot episode – Campebell is far more reserved and information-oriented here than on his much sillier and more rambling commentaries for the Evil Dead films – with all remaining special features confined to the eighth disc. There is a video catalog of ‘Coming Things’ from the show, newly narrated by Campbell, a very strong retrospective documentary featuring fresh interviews with the key players in the show, brief looks at the key skills and features of the show, video of Campbell reading the Brisco County chapter from his book If Chins Could Kill, notes for every episode written by Campbell, and – most interesting – a forty plus minute round table discussion with the entire writing staff – a fascinating feature that takes ou through the process of creating the unique show.
The quibbles with the package are relatively minor. First, as he has proven elsewhere, Campbell gives great commentary and a single, very seriously approached, episode just isn’t nearly enough. Get this man in the studio with his costars and cut him loose. Second, though the transfers are solid – quite clean and clear – they appear to have been transferred from broadcast sources and, as such, are about Beta quality. It may very well be that these were the only sources available – I don’t imagine Fox holding on to the negatives for a small show cancelled in 1994 – but for a show as well shot as Brisco, and a show shot on film, I had hoped to see a new transfer struck from film at higher resolution than what this offers. Still, this is worlds better than what has been circulating since the show’s cancellation.
While I would stop short of labeling the show a classic, The Adventures of Brisco County Junior has been an in demand cult title for so many years for reasons that stretch well beyond the cult status of its lead. This is a very good show – smart, funny, very well crafted and obviously a labor of love for everyone involved. There has never been anything quite like Brisco before and very likely never will be again. The fans who have been waiting for this for years will be pleased by the overall quality of the release and need no encouragement to pick it up. For the uninitiated who are nonetheless fans of the unusual, this comes highly recommended.