TV: Yee ha! The return of the seven…

By Teri Fitsell

Pop quiz: Can you name the actors who played The Magnificent Seven in John Sturges' 1960 Western classic?

And while you ponder(-osa) that, let's consider TV3's Monday night pilot episode for a TV series of The Magnificent Seven based on the movie which was in turn based on Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai.

Some of us have Westerns deep in our blood, from childhood years in front of the TV with a cowboy-mad grandad, then dad and now partner ... sorry, pardner. And the pilot certainly had all the right preposterous ingredients - not to mention Elmer Bernstein's fabulous theme music - that go to make a good Western.

From the early scenes of gun-happy cowboys galloping through town "shootin' holes in the clouds," you know all the desired cliches are a-comin'.

These guys are "trail-herders from Texas, all liquored up and in the mood for a lynchin'." And black-clad gunslinger Michael Biehn (The Terminator) in the Yul Brynner role of Chris, is gonna deal with them.

He starts struttin' his classic cool guy stuff after the pesky trail herders shoot off the top of his whisky bottle, but he still takes a slug before striding out of the saloon to do what a man's gotta do.

As in the movie, Chris and shotgun-toting sidekick Vin (played by Eric Close in the Steve McQueen role) sort out the varmints attempting to lynch a black guy (Rick Worthy) on the grounds that "there ain't no darkie doctors and there ain't never gonna be."

Worthy (in the knife-slinging James Coburn role) then joins the other two in the saloon, where a Native American elder approaches and asks them to come and protect his village from outlaws who are after the gold they believe is in them thar hills.

At this stage, Vin utters the line: "If they're asking the white man for help, they gotta be desperate" ... apparently not having noticed that one of his new pardners was black.

Aw, shucks, let's not be too picky, 'cos true to the film, the magnificent three then go off to hire four more gunslingers - including Ron Perlman in the Charles Bronson-type role and Anthony Starke as a kind of Robert Vaughn - to fight for the cause.

They hit the trail to the village to teach the locals how to defend themselves and en route, get the chance to utter some classic cowboy lines, though none matches McQueen's unforgettable, "We deal in lead, friend."

Come the climactic gunbattle, the pilot did perhaps become more Blazing Saddles than Magnificent Seven, since the villagers turned out to have manufactured replicas of themselves to fool the outlaws.

The only thing missing was Martin Short's line from The Three Amigos (another M7 spoof), when he passionately exhorted a villager to "Sew, old lady .... sew like the wind."

Still, Kirkwood Smith (That 70s Show) puts up a worthy performance as the outlaw leader, an ex-Confederate soldier. While he didn't come near Eli Wallach's brilliant bandit Calvera from the film, he was hot on the cliches, particularly when he started shooting his own guys in the back leaving us in no doubt he was a couple of stirrups short of a saddle.

Interestingly, the pilot episode was directed by New Zealander Geoff Murphy, he of Goodbye Pork Pie, Utu, Young Guns II (most appropriate), etc fame. And even more interestingly - for Western junkies, anyway - the pilot attracted high enough ratings on Monday night to prompt TV3 to saddle up for the rest of the series.

It will start on August 20, when it's scheduled to follow Crocodile Hunter and JAG for a testosterone-steeped Friday night line-up.

By the way, the other two originals from The Magnificent Seven are Horst Buchholz, who played the youngster, and Brad Dexter, the one who was convinced there was silver in them thar hills.