Stream It Or Skip It: 'Wyatt Earp And The Cowboy War' On Netflix, a docudrama about the legendary lawman's rivalry with the cowboys of wild west Arizona (2024)

Wyatt Earp And The Cowboy War is a docudrama, narrated by Ed Harris, that examines the real story about how Earp and his brothers, lawmen in the silver-rich town of Tombstone, Arizona, took on the Cowboys, a gang of cattle rustlers and other criminals, in the 1880s. Instead of relying on just scripted scenes or docuseries interviews, it judiciously utilizes both.

WYATT EARP AND THE COWBOY WAR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: “October 26th, 1881.” We see a shootout in progress.

The Gist: Wyatt Earp And The Cowboy War alternates between scripted reenactments and talking-head interviews with archival photographs. In the reenactments, we start at the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral, with Wyatt Earp (Tim Fellingham), his brothers Virgil (Ariel Eliaz) and Morgan (Shane Penhale), and Holliday (Edward Franklin) on one side, and Cowboy leader Ike Clanton (Jack Gordon) and his crew on the other.

But before the show does a deep dive into the shootout and its aftermath, we go back seven months, to a robbery of a Wells Fargo stagecoach that killed a driver and a guard. Back in Tombstone, where the stagecoach originated, Sheriff Behan (Alex Price) has the Earp brothers investigate. When they find the first of the gang that robbed the stagecoach, the snakeskin band on his hat indicated that he was a member of the Cowboys. The guy flips on his partner in the attack.

Wyatt Earp goes to Clanton to find out where that partner is, Clanton and his men manage to get the snitch out of lockup so they can take care of him themselves. Holliday gets arrested and thrown into jail on a false accusation that he robbed the stagecoach. When a reward is put on the stagecoach robbers’ heads, Clanton himself becomes a snitch in order to collect. But the reward is rescinded when the robbers are killed before Earp can arrest them. That means no money, and Clanton so angry that he’s ready to confront Earp, his brothers and Holliday.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Wyatt Earp And The Cowboy War is in this seemingly new category of “docudrama,” which intersperses scripted reenactments with interviews and real archival footage. A good example of this genre is Netflix’s Queen Cleopatra, but Wyatt Earp is a much better production. (If you’re on the hunt for something with better production and storytelling values, try Kevin Costner as the legendary lawman in Wyatt Earp or Kurt Russell in Tombstone.)

Our Take: What Wyatt Earp And The Cowboy War does that most other shows in this hybrid genre don’t is pay as much if not more attention to the scripted part than the documentary part. Directed by Patrick Reams and written by Reams, Stephen David and Henry Fitzherbert, the series takes a complex story and makes it accessible, via a modern rock-and-roll soundtrack and Harris’ avuncular narration. It also helps that the performances of Fellingham as Earp and Gordon as Clanton are more than credible.

The talking heads are used somewhat sparingly, and they’re all well-known experts in the history of the Wild West, as well as Earp and Clanton. But the driver of the series is the scripted portion, which is stitched together by Harris’ narration; the veteran actor is there to skewer myths that have perpetuated over the last 140 years about Earp, the Cowboys and the O.K. Corral shootout.

But Harris is also there to put things into real-world context, like why the $6,000 reward for the stagecoach robbers was a huge, unprecedented sum back then. He also discusses how Tombstone wasn’t some “dusty, dirty lawless hellhole like you see in old Hollywood movies”; it had a wealthy population and became a cultural center in the Wild West, thanks to the nearby supply of silver. It also had the attention of JP Morgan (Peter O’Meara), the well-connected American banker who wanted to buy up the railroads and improve them. He needed his aristocratic British investors to feel that sending their money to the States was safe, and stagecoach robberies tended to make them cautious.

Because of the complexity of the situation — the Cowboy War began with the O.K. Corral shootout — the plotting of the series can go a little awry. But with Harris as well as the talking heads — including famous historian Douglas Brinkley — walking us through the various players and motivations, and a clear mandate to tell most of the story through the reenactments, the entire series is much more entertaining than most of what we’ve seen from the docudrama genre to this point.

Sex and Skin: None in the first two episodes.

Parting Shot: Ike Clanton’s brother Billy (Dylan Stav) is the first to draw his gun at the O.K. Corral, and the shootout is underway.

Sleeper Star: Edward Franklin is a lot of fun as Holliday, the former dentist who drinks to suppress his consumption-caused coughing fits, and is as big a wild card as Wyatt Earp has on his side.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Wyatt Earp slugs one of the stagecoach robbery suspects, his brother says, “You didn’t have to do that,” to which Wyatt responds, “Yeah, I did.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. Wyatt Earp And The Cowboy War takes an entertaining look at a surprisingly complex part of American history, with its judicious use of narration and interview supporting well-written and well-acted scripted reenactments.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.