"Mostly we get our cowboy-story traditions not from the old West but from old Westerns. The movies invented the fast-draw shootout, the sorrowful gunfighter and the big fancy saloon that somehow operates in a flyspeck town, pop. 87. Television picked up these conventions and added a few more, like the dynastic ranching family in which all the men wear six-shooters while pitching hay or eating pie."

"Trouble is, the television Western has been away so long that we no longer take its premises for granted. Gunfighting a profession? How does it pay?"

"Paradise looks to revive the TV Western in a pure and respectful form, saving most of the movie traditions but discarding some of the sillier ones."

"...and it's stories are about the things that Westerns are supposed to be about: self-reliance and manly honor and all that."