Bret Maverick

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Bret Maverick is a 1981 television series featuring James Garner in the role that made him famous in the 1957 series Maverick. Although the ratings were respectable, the writing of Bret Maverick wasn't up to the stratospheric standards of the first series and it was unexpectedly canceled by NBC at the end of the first season despite fairly strong ratings. Jack Kelly had been slated to return as Bret's brother Bart Maverick in the second season, and briefly appeared at the very end of the first and only season. A number of scripts for the following season had been written and presented to Kelly, according to subsequent interviews.

The 1978 TV-movie The New Maverick could be said to be the pilot for both this series and the 1979 failure Young Maverick, a short-lived series which had featured Charles Frank as preppie former Harvard student Ben Maverick, the son of Roger Moore's character Beau Maverick (although Moore only appeared in the original series).

The production of this series was linked to Garner's quitting midway through the sixth season of The Rockford Files in 1979/1980. Because he couldn`t finish The Rockford Files, although he was contractually obliged, he made a deal that he would reprise his Maverick role in a new series.

Other recurring cast members of this series, set in a small Arizona town, include country singer Ed Bruce as a sheriff, Stuart Margolin as a crooked Native American, and Darleen Carr as a fetching editor of the local newspaper. The 2-hour first episode was eventually trimmed and repackaged as a TV-movie for rerunning on local stations under the title Bret Maverick: The Lazy Ace.

On April 21, 2006, a ten foot bronze statue of James Garner as Bret Maverick was unveiled in Garner's hometown of Norman, Oklahoma, with Garner present at the ceremony.

For much more information about Garner and the "Bret Maverick" character, see Maverick.