The Wild Wild West

1 9 6 5 - 1 9 6 9 (USA)
104 x 60 minute episodes

Entrusted by  President Ulysses S. Grant to defend America from all manner of bad people, dashing secret Agents Jim West and Artemus Gordon roamed the West battling revolutionaries and other subversive types.

Artemus was a master of disguise and dialects, and an ingenious inventor of gadgets to foil the assorted madmen they constantly pursued.  The duo's main nemesis (with a remarkable facility for evading capture) was the diminutive Dr Miguelito Loveless, a brilliant antagonist bent on taking over the world.

The two of them traveled in a special railroad car that supplied all the materials they needed to concoct all sorts of strange weapons and devices to foil their adversaries.  Beautiful women, fantastically contrived situations, and bizarre and creative devices populated this series throughout its four year run. 

The actors performed many of  their own stunts on  this CBS series, and took the bumps and bruises one might expect from such work. In one of the more extreme mishaps, Conrad fell off a prop and fractured his skull. Charles Aidman (as Jeremy Pike) briefly filled in for Artemus when Ross Martin had a mild heart attack. 

A movie version of Wild Wild West was made in the late 1990s, starring Will Smith and Kevin Kline.