The Immigrants

(Shortened summary in the bottom of the review)

This new tv-show (Billy the Kid) is of to a damn great start with this magnificent pilot episode showcasing how you make a real western with great plot and great scenography. Also a really great cast with especially Tom Blyth being the perfect casting as Billy the Kid/William Bonney. Its actually wild when you think about the few things in this episode that actually may or may not be historically inaccurate of what we know, but that also just goes to show that you sometimes maybe gets the best result by not going full on historical accurate, so shout out to the Writers for doing a great job with that

(11/10) Really an extraordinary tv-pilot episode!!

Shortened summary: This new tv show (Billy the Kid) based on the real person of the same name does fantastic in creating this not exactly accurate, but still phenomenal depiction of this legendary cowboy.

Looks like Billy and his family left NY, traveled through west Texas and found Coffeyville, KS somewhere in the southern Rockies? I'm not exactly a stickler for accuracy in movies, I understand sacrifices have to be made for entertainment value but the landscape shown is so wrong it's hard to ignore.

The opener outlines the harsh and tragic conditions of Billy's upbringing as the family struggle to move west. It is, though, a heavily laden caravan, taking a tortuous 45 minutes to do the work of 15.

On the plus side, the style is gritty environmental realism overlaid with a well-portrayed human emotional struggle, creating a feeling of empathy for the characters. Strong performances from Jonah Collier as Billy and Eileen O'Higgins as his mother.

After one episode the jury is out, this has potential to blossom forth or become self-absorbed and wither on the vine.

Maybe nobody cares about history but that's no excuse to be irresponsible. I know that the irish myth is that they mostly immigrated thru ny and boston but that's no reason to keep repeating the same myths without doing a little research. In the 1800s, the 2nd largest number of irish, scotch, and welsh was thru the ports along the southern coast and particularly new orleans. In fact around the time of the civil war there was calif but the west was still LA and TX, for the period which often goes overlooked by the current media retrospective history writers. Also, the path that they supposedly took in this episode is nonsense. Can I prove it, yes but not in the length of a tweet and besides, the producers probably don't care and future producers will just do the same as this group. Watch more tv than actually learn something. There are a lot of other errors too. I get it. It's not a documentary but you don't expect to see rayguns and uber cabs when you're watching a western.