Cade's County

This series has a strong cast & good production. What happened that it ran so short a time? CBS was a big piece of the problem. This series was on the network which had given itself a black eye with the over hyped western dud Lancer. After such a terrible entry, folks ignored this entry because they were afraid it would be just as bad.

Then, CBS put it on late Sunday evenings. This time slot back in the three network days was a kiss of death for almost any program. As a matter of fact, Johnny Carson's quip concerning this show in a monologue on The Tonight Show then: "According to the latest Nielson ratings it dismayed CBS to find out that more than 90 percent of households tuned to Cades County on Sunday nights are using the program as a night light." Carsons pot shot at the show is a little cruel, but the program was canceled in one season.

This was how the series was called in Portugal when it aired around 1975. How do I add this info?

After a string of hits movies to boot(which were mostly Westerns),legendary Hollywood actor Glenn Ford gave TV a try with this weekly series that is now seldom seen nowadays. Here you'll have a show that was part of a modern day Western,and part crime drama show all in one and it was one of those shows that kept you on what would happen next. Ford was the tough and sensitive sheriff of Madrid County who kept law and order with his deputy(Petticoat Junction's Edgar Buchanan). However it did tackle issues that were relevant in its day like the plight of the American Indian,and the overall discrimination of the Mexican American and other minorities. The overall opening sequence of the show(seen with Ford going through the mountain landscape in a Jeep)makes for one of the best shows ever from the early 1970's that is rarely seen. NOTE:The shows theme was written by composer Henry Mancini,and this would be Glenn Ford's only TV series to date which ran from 1971-1973 on CBS.

Cades County had a great opening sequence with Glenn Ford riding his Jeep V6 through the desert landscape to the arrangement by Henry Mancini. It was a Big Picture title sequence for Television. I enjoyed this series and some of the episode's were well written and addressed some of the more difficult American issues of the time. Unfortunately, the budget,screen writing & direction was not of a consistently high standard (I am a fan of the Series). Some episodes were great, others very ordinary. I heard at the time that the network was selecting scripts from independent writers for each episode. If that was the case, a better idea would have been to stick with one set of writers so as to develop the characters and the story lines and retain an audience. We should recall that the early seventies was a time when older Movie stars were attracted to TV. Ford did an admirable job as Sam Cade as he did in all his movie roles. But in the end I believe it was the budget and the poor scripts that killed the series. Glenn Ford travelled to Australia to promote the Series in 1971/72 for the Australian TV Logie awards.

Regards Peter H Sydney, Austraila

Cade's County was one of two television series that Glenn Ford tried after his time as a big movie name was up and he knew it. The man was smart and transitioned gracefully into middle age. Westerns are a great medium for older stars to transition in. And Ford had appeared in some of the best westerns ever made.

The show was set in fictional Madrid County in Arizona. If Sam Cade and his deputies seem to cover a large bit of territory, take a good look at a map of Arizona with the county lines printed. There are about a dozen counties and some of them are larger than many of our New England states. The show had no big metropolitan areas like Phoenix, Tucson, or Yuma in it, it was strictly a rural affair.

The show lasted only one season despite good critical reception, not great and decent ratings. CBS pulled the plug on it because right at that time it was going on an anti-violence kick along with the other two networks.

I think one of the things that could have saved it was if they had developed more of the personal lives of the sheriff's office of Madrid County. The show had the potential to be like In The Heat Of The Night set in the Southwest. Ford and his deputies which included, Victor Mohica, Taylor Lacher, Edgar Buchanan, and his son Peter Ford were never really seen too much as three dimensional characters. We knew Ford's father had also served as Madrid County Sheriff and was killed in the line of duty and Edgar Buchanan had served with him. That's all I can remember.

Ford and Edgar Buchanan had a long standing friendship from their first film together, Texas back in 1941. It was only fitting that Ford find a place for Buchanan who had recently left the canceled Petticoat Junction when CBS went on an anti-rural kick. Ford and Buchanan were in about a dozen films together.

Cade's County should have been given a much better chance to succeed from CBS.