Early Laredo concept from  The Doug Abbott collection of Western TV Photos

LAREDO's tales of the Texas Rangers came from Universal, the studio that produced the longer-running series Bonanza and The Virginian.  Laredo maintained a consistently light tone comparable to the humorous episodes of Bonanza.  [Think, “Joe Cartwright, Private Detective” or “Hoss and the Leprechauns”]

Don Addams Laredo promo voiceover for Laredo:   “What makes this hour-long series a sure winner, is that Laredo has the same number of syllables as Bonanza.”

Laredo just barely cracked the top 40 at 8:30-9:30 Thursday nights in competition with Bewitched, My Three Sons" & "The Thursday Night Movie".  It didn’t do as well with its move to 10 p.m.  Friday time in the slot vacated by "Man From Uncle", opposite "Twelve O’Clock High" & "The CBS Friday Night Movie".

Laredo had many qualities which made it watchable, but anyone old enough to have seen Peter Brown’s top notch performance in four years of Lawman or fast enough to catch William Smith’s melodramatic/action turn in the too-quickly cancelled 1985 series Wildside will realize Laredo had a lot of potential as a western action series it struggled to live up to.

Picture used on back of the only Laredo comic from the Doug Abbott collection of Western TV Photos