Where It Started
The Wild Wild West was born as an original television concept, not an adaptation of any prior novel, comic, or play. Producer Michael Garrison pitched it to CBS as a marriage of the western and the spy thriller, a formula that had been proven on both fronts: westerns dominated network television, and James Bond had just remade cinema. His pitch was, essentially, James Bond in the 1870s American frontier.
The series premiered on CBS on September 17, 1965, starring Robert Conrad as Secret Service agent James West and Ross Martin as the brilliant, shape-shifting Artemus Gordon. Working under President Ulysses S. Grant, the pair operated out of a private rail car stuffed with gadgetry that would not look out of place in Q Branch. The show ran for four seasons and 104 episodes, producing one of television's first sustained takes on what we would later call steampunk: Victorian-era technology pushed to fantastical extremes, clanking automata, dirigibles, and deathtraps courtesy of recurring villain Dr. Miguelito Loveless.
The franchise traveled modestly from there. Two reunion TV movies appeared in 1979 and 1980, reuniting Conrad and Martin. A feature film arrived in 1999 under director Barry Sonnenfeld with Will Smith and Kevin Kline in the leads, making the steampunk subtext into lavish visual spectacle while largely abandoning the tone and craft of the original. The 1999 film was a commercial disappointment and a critical punching bag, but it preserved the franchise in cultural memory long enough for the original series to find new audiences on streaming.
The Wild Wild West understood that Bond worked because of wit, physical grace, and a genuinely threatening adversary, not because of the setting. That understanding is what separates the original series from every successor.
Every Version of The Wild Wild West
The source series, its revivals, and the feature film
The Wild Wild West Across the Decades
- 1965Original CBS series premieres The Wild Wild West
- 1969Series cancelled after Season 4 The Wild Wild West
- 1979Reunion TV movie The Wild Wild West
- 1980Second reunion TV movie Wild West
- 1999Blockbuster feature film remake Wild Wild West
The definitive version is the original, and it is not close
The 1965 CBS series holds up with remarkable force. Robert Conrad's James West is one of the great physical performers in television history, doing his own stunts, and the show's commitment to wit over spectacle gives it a longevity that the 1999 film, for all its budget, completely lacks. Ross Martin's Artemus Gordon is the better half of the duo in many episodes, a master of disguise and comic timing who makes the partnership feel genuinely complementary. The Loveless episodes, with Michael Dunn as the villain, are peak genre television.
The reunion movies are worth more than their reputation suggests
The 1979 and 1980 TV movies, made a decade after cancellation, are clearly working with reduced budgets and a slightly more self-aware, lighter tone. But Conrad and Martin had genuinely aged into something interesting together, and the chemistry that made the original series work is still present. The Wild Wild West Revisited in particular plays like a warm and knowing farewell to a world the filmmakers love, rather than a cynical cash-in. Ross Martin died of a heart attack in 1981, making these two movies his final work with Conrad. That gives them a weight their modest production values never could.
The 1999 film is the one to approach with very low expectations
Barry Sonnenfeld's feature film has a few things going for it: genuine production design ambition, Kevin Kline committing earnestly to a double role, and a mechanical spider set piece that is at least visually inventive. What it does not have is the wit, the grounded physical action, or any real interest in the characters beyond their function as wisecracking props. Will Smith has been better in nearly every other film he made. He later called it the worst decision of his career. Watch it as a document of late-1990s blockbuster excess rather than as an adaptation of anything.
If you love the spy-western genre
Secret agents, frontier settings, gadgetry, and impossible missions
If you love the Victorian steampunk aesthetic
Brass gadgets, top hats, dirigibles, and retrofuturism
If you love the mismatched-partner action format
Two very different people, one shared mission
More steampunk frontiers and gadget adventures
Weird Westerns
Explore the Weird Westerns guide →The show's villain, Dr. Miguelito Loveless, is one of television's great recurring antagonists: brilliant, bitter, funny, and genuinely dangerous. Michael Dunn played him in ten episodes. The 1999 film gave the role to Kenneth Branagh and buried it under CGI.On what the original series got right