"But with the passing of time, every myth has it's reckoning".
So begins every episode of "Legends & Lies", the Bill O'Reilly produced series that debuted on the Fox News Channel in April, 2015. In tone and presentation, the ten part documentary series resembles a similar effort from 1998 called "Gunfighters of the West", collected in DVD format by Non Fiction Films. That series also featured ten stories, with Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James, Billy the Kid and Butch Cassidy common to both.
There are a number of similarities between the two series. Both have narrators with actor Brian Dennehy doing the honors for 'Gunfighters', while Dermot Mulroney is the principal narrator for "Legends & Lies". Both series utilize a handful of vignettes about the character under study, generally opening each segment with a major event in the life of the historical person, and then backtracking to fill in details about their life and achievements. For comparison purposes, Gunfighters is a bit more static and monotone in it's approach. Interestingly, I found both series to get their stories a bit muddled in relation to chronology, referencing events in a back and forth manner rather than follow a straight line path like a movie might undertake.
There's also the use of commentators making their observations of the subjects under discussion, with Bill O'Reilly himself offering observations for each L&L episode. The Gunfighters series seemed to rely more on Western historians while Legends offers more in the way of academics who lend their expertise to the shows. One difference that shows up is in the way the main subjects are presented. In Gunfighters, the actors portraying the principals never spoke a line of dialog, they were merely shown in reenactments of important events. In the subject series, the actors get in on the action so to speak, by citing era newspaper accounts of their heroics or quoting themselves from letters they might have written to family members or friends. It's an interesting approach that draws the viewer in by having the principal share elements of his life directly with the audience.
If you watch all ten episodes it becomes readily apparent that the production company economizes wherever possible. There are no celebrity personalities used in the presentations, and you'll note the same railroad train show up in show after show no matter what time frame. It could be the 1870's with the James Gang or the early 1900's with Butch Cassidy. A note of interest with Butch Cassidy, he and the Sundance Kid are the only famous and infamous characters presented to be born after the Civil War ended, making them the last true outlaws of the Old West.
What you get with "Legends & Lies" generally is a uniquely different view of famous names from the past, and you'll certainly pick up information you probably never heard of before. One surprise for me was the inclusion of a story about Bass Reeves, someone I'd never heard of before, but as presented here, winds up as the possible inspiration for the fictional character of The Lone Ranger. With this one, as with all the other chapters, each serves as a springboard to further research and examination, and helps the viewer maintain a critical eye when watching a theatrical film like "Tombstone" or "Young Guns".
So begins every episode of "Legends & Lies", the Bill O'Reilly produced series that debuted on the Fox News Channel in April, 2015. In tone and presentation, the ten part documentary series resembles a similar effort from 1998 called "Gunfighters of the West", collected in DVD format by Non Fiction Films. That series also featured ten stories, with Wild Bill Hickok, Jesse James, Billy the Kid and Butch Cassidy common to both.
There are a number of similarities between the two series. Both have narrators with actor Brian Dennehy doing the honors for 'Gunfighters', while Dermot Mulroney is the principal narrator for "Legends & Lies". Both series utilize a handful of vignettes about the character under study, generally opening each segment with a major event in the life of the historical person, and then backtracking to fill in details about their life and achievements. For comparison purposes, Gunfighters is a bit more static and monotone in it's approach. Interestingly, I found both series to get their stories a bit muddled in relation to chronology, referencing events in a back and forth manner rather than follow a straight line path like a movie might undertake.
There's also the use of commentators making their observations of the subjects under discussion, with Bill O'Reilly himself offering observations for each L&L episode. The Gunfighters series seemed to rely more on Western historians while Legends offers more in the way of academics who lend their expertise to the shows. One difference that shows up is in the way the main subjects are presented. In Gunfighters, the actors portraying the principals never spoke a line of dialog, they were merely shown in reenactments of important events. In the subject series, the actors get in on the action so to speak, by citing era newspaper accounts of their heroics or quoting themselves from letters they might have written to family members or friends. It's an interesting approach that draws the viewer in by having the principal share elements of his life directly with the audience.
If you watch all ten episodes it becomes readily apparent that the production company economizes wherever possible. There are no celebrity personalities used in the presentations, and you'll note the same railroad train show up in show after show no matter what time frame. It could be the 1870's with the James Gang or the early 1900's with Butch Cassidy. A note of interest with Butch Cassidy, he and the Sundance Kid are the only famous and infamous characters presented to be born after the Civil War ended, making them the last true outlaws of the Old West.
What you get with "Legends & Lies" generally is a uniquely different view of famous names from the past, and you'll certainly pick up information you probably never heard of before. One surprise for me was the inclusion of a story about Bass Reeves, someone I'd never heard of before, but as presented here, winds up as the possible inspiration for the fictional character of The Lone Ranger. With this one, as with all the other chapters, each serves as a springboard to further research and examination, and helps the viewer maintain a critical eye when watching a theatrical film like "Tombstone" or "Young Guns".
