Stream On: The chase is on! ‘Tracker’ and ‘Wanted—Dead or Alive’
In Justin Hartley’s new series, ‘Tracker,’ he plays a “rewardist” who travels the country to find people for pay.
One of the basic story types is the chase. In Justin Hartley’s new network series, Tracker, he plays a self-described “rewardist” who travels the country to find people for pay. He’s not, although he’s similar to, a bounty hunter, which, back in the day, Steve McQueen’s TV series Wanted—Dead or Alive depicted.
/Streaming /Amazon /😎89%😌72% /Trailer /2024 /TV14
Jeffery Deaver, author of The Never Game, on which Tracker is based, served two terms as president of the Mystery Writers of America, and was recently named a Grand Master of MWA, among Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Mary Higgins Clark and Walter Mosely. His notion of a rewardist is a good fit for a TV series.
Tracker is an anthology show; that is, its protagonist, Colter Shaw (Hartley, This Is Us), visits a variety of locations for his work. He lives in an Airstream-type trailer on rewards he collects for finding people and is aided by Teddi Bruin (Robin Weigert, Deadwood) and her wife Velma (Abby McEnany), who find cases for Colter and do background research, and Bobby Exley, (Eric Graise) a cocky hacker who assists Shaw online.
Fiona Rene plays Reenie Greene, an attorney who assists Colter in legal matters and provides some sexual tension with Colter’s brother Russell (Jensen Ackles, Smallville), who appears infrequently, like Sherlock Holmes’ brother Mycroft.
In the first few episodes, Colter receives a mission from his co-handler Teddi to find 14-year-old Gilbert Brown, believed to be with his non-custodial father Edward; in Montana, accountant Jackson Cheong is missing after quitting his job and Colter learns from Bobby that Jackson's girlfriend Rebecca is a con-artist; near Cascade, Idaho, Colter sees a man confronting a woman for leaving a poster for her sister, “van-lifer” Mia Stine, on his car, with Colter getting stabbed when he intervenes. The writing is economical: the setups are given by Colter’s clients, and there’s a season-long arc; in the first season it’s about Colter’s own past and family.
Rotten Tomatoes’ consensus is favorable: “Making great use of Justin Hartley's swaggering appeal, Tracker takes a spartan approach to a classic formula and yields a highly efficient entertainment.”
/Streaming /Amazon /★8.0/10 /DVD-Trailer /1958 /TVG
Tracker’s Justin Hartley is very cool, but not as cool as the king of, Steve McQueen, who had his own “Tracker” series back in the day, about a bounty hunter. In 1958 Wanted—Dead or Alive was considered an “adult” western, as opposed to The Lone Ranger. In 2025 it’s not so much—not as subtle dramatically as Gunsmoke, which still holds up, but Wanted is saved by McQueen’s considerable charisma, and is still quite watchable today.
McQueen plays Josh Randall, a wild-west bounty hunter—with a conscience. Producer Vincent Fennelly was looking for an actor to play a bounty hunter for an episode of Robert Culp’s Trackdown (not streaming) and found McQueen “a little guy who looks tough enough to get the job done, but with a boyish appeal behind the toughness.” “The Bounty Hunter” episode of Trackdown, which aired in March of 1958, was a back-door pilot for Wanted; CBS liked what they saw and ordered it for a Fall start.
Since Josh Randall was so polite, they gave him a big stick: a custom cut-down 1892 Winchester carbine, called a “mare’s leg,” that could be fired with one hand (supposedly) and carried in a holster like a pistol. (Randall’s appears to be the first 1892 modified like this, but it’s still a popular customization and replicas are offered by Winchester and other armorers. It’s probably why I, as a 9-year-old, also liked this “adult” western.)
The Internet Movie Database’s featured review says, “Wanted: Dead or Alive was one of the ‘greatest’ if not the ‘best’ of the Four-Star-produced television Westerns to come out of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, that made an unknown actor by the name of Steve McQueen into a bona-fide star.”
Sources include Wikipedia (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License); JefferyDeaver.com; WesternClippings.com; American Rifleman
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