The Wild West

In 1869, George Armstrong Custer smoked the peace pipe that meant the US Army would fight no more against the Sioux Indians. Custer was glorious, glamorous and a national hero. But seven years later, triumph turned to tragedy. At the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, General Custer led a raid to exterminate the Sioux Indians - and died in the attempt. General Custer's death has given rise to a hundred myths. Was he killed by lance, arrow, tomahawk or bullet? Was he the first or last to die? Presenting a radical new picture of the battle, this episode creates an image of a driven man with dark secrets whose rivalries with his own officers would cost all of them their lives. Based on written accounts, Native American pictograms and the oral testimony of the survivors, this film reveals the dark secrets of Custer's earlier campaigns, and how they hold the key to understanding the Little Big Horn. It also reveals that although two-thirds of Custer's soldiers were killed, research shows he was close to a remarkable victory. For many years it was said that no witnesses survived the slaughter of Custer and his men. In fact, more than one thousand American Indians survived, and their long-ignored accounts are now proving to be highly accurate according to latest archaeology.

Escapologist, lover, joker, charmer - everyone loved Billy. When he died, he was just 21 years old but he had killed six men. Careful scrutiny of the many original letters written by The Kid, and reports drawn from government files reveal an amazing truth. The government had promised Billy The Kid immunity from prosecution for his first two killings, both of which happened as part of a cattle war where all law had broken down on the frontier. But once Billy had served his purpose as a prosecution witness, the deal was not honoured. Billy was forced back on the run, turned back to crime, killed two more men and was captured. Sentenced to death, he was guarded by two deputies who taunted him about his hanging until he escaped, and shot them both dead with their own guns. Two months later Billy was ambushed at a remote homestead and shot dead. Based on detailed scrutiny of court records, letters and press reports, this film re-creates in exact detail all Billy's killings, and examines the case behind the pardoning of Billy The Kid.

The gunfight at the OK Corral was the classic Western shoot-out. It eventually turned one man into a great American hero and a symbol of the nation. His name was Wyatt Earp. But after the smoke cleared on that fateful day in Tombstone in the autumn of 1881 with Tom McLaury, his brother Frank and Billy Clanton lying dead in the dusty street, Wyatt Earp wasn’t seen as a hero but a villain. The legendary lawman was arrested and put on trial for murder. And the prosecution were so sure of victory that they pushed for the ultimate penalty – death. The resulting court case was one of the most dramatic in American history and its outcome helped shape the nation. The most famous of a new breed of lawmen, Wyatt Earp had himself been a notorious gunfighter. But when he came riding into Dodge City in 1876, the mayor hired him to be the peacekeeper. The gun-slinging drunken cowboys had met their match. Earp was tougher and meaner than they were. But he understood that you couldn’t end the violence, you could only keep it at bay – keep it away from the community you were trying to protect. He was given full control and immediately created the famous ‘deadline’ – a border into town beyond which no one could carry a gun. Anywhere outside the ‘deadline’ it was every man for himself, anything went. Inside the town, Wyatt Earp was in control and he made the rules. Tombstone, his next town, had a similar ‘deadline’. The gunning down of three men by three Earp brothers and their psychotic friend ‘Doc’ Halliday symbolised a lawless world, but the fact it led to a trial is vital, symbolising how the rule of law would eventually take over from the rule of the gun. Ironically, the trial spared Wyatt’s life, but the law was not able to protect his brothers, gunned down in the following year by the McLaury clan. So in a final bloody climax, Wyatt abandoned his badge, and hunted down and killed the killers. This film recreates what happened in the 30 se