CBS adds a David Mamet-produced remake of Have Gun—Will Travel to the list of Western revivals

Although TV's supposed Western revival has thus far been a lot of fussin' and fightin' and hollerin' and lassoin' that has mostly only taken place metaphorically off screen, as very few of the shows that have that stuff have actually made it onto air, CBS continues to try anyway, because it already bought all these cowboy hats. "It's Unexplained Cowboy Hat Week on CBS!" one internal network memo has proposed before swiftly being rejected, and so here we are. So now, in addition to its Chris Columbus-led revival of The Rifleman, CBS is also pursuing a reboot of another classic series, Have Gun—Will Travel, with its former The Unit producer David Mamet. Should the series actually make it to broadcast, Mamet will lend his acumen for intelligent yet angry characters who are not fucking with you and who also have business cards to the story of Paladin, the erudite mercenary gunslinger who is as efficient with a revolver as he is with a classified ad's word count. It's an admirable marriage of man and material, even if Mamet's similar skills with profanity just serve to remind, as with most of these "Western revival" stories, that Deadwood is still canceled.