Retired Texas Rangers Gus McRae and Woodrow Call are content to live out their remaining years in the tiny Texas town of Lonesome Dove. Then their old friend Jake comes to town, and tells them about the incredible opportunities for cattle ranching in Montana. Encouraged by this, Call convinces Gus and many other townspeople to go on a perilous cattle drive to Montana. Gus has another agenda though: his former sweetheart now lives in Nebraska, and he hopes for a second chance with her. As the drive goes on it takes on an epic scale, ultimately becoming what could well be called the central event in the lives of all involved.
Captain Call has just buried Gus at Lonesome Dove and plans to head back to his ranch in Montana. Looking at a herd of wild Mustangs, he decides to drive them north with the help of Isom and Gideon Walker. Gideon hires Agostina Vega and Mexican Cowboys to run the Mustangs. Call leads the drive for Nebraska and runs into Cherokee Jack and a group of Indians, which almost costs him his life. In Montana, Newt and Jasper get into a shoot out in the local bar and wind up in jail. The odds of them surviving the lynch mob are slim until Dunnegan has them freed. Newt had rescued Dunnegan's wife Ferris, from a band of cattle rustlers and Dunnegan is thankful. However, Newt and Jasper will have to work for Dunnegan to keep their freedom.
Set in the small western town of Curtis Wells, Lonesome Dove: The Series follows first the romance and later the marriage of Newt Call and Hannah Peale, and the obsession that Clay Mosby, who owns most of the town, has with young Hannah, who looks remarkably like his late wife, Mary. In addition to the talented regular Canadian cast of Scott Bairstow, Christianne Hirt, and Eric McCormack, the show also featured the recurring players of Dennis Weaver as legend Buffalo Bill Cody, Diahann Carroll as innkeeper and widow Ida Grayson, Paul Johansson as newspaperman and family member Austin Peale, and Paul Le Mat as Hannah's father and the editor of the local paper.
"Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years" begins two years after the end of "Lonesome Dove". After two years spent bounty hunting, womanizing, and drinking away the painful memories of his late wife, Hannah, Newt Call returns to town to find many things have changed. His brother-in-law, Austin, is now an alcoholic sheriff, who has never fully recovered from his beloved sister's death, and blames Call for it. His father-in-law, Josiah, is the town mayor, but hasn't been right in the head since Hannah died. The town is run under the iron fist of Clayton Mosby, who also cannot forget Hannah, who looked amazingly like his late wife, Mary. "The Lonesome Dove", the hotel opened in the mini-series by Ida Grayson, now belongs to Amanda Carpenter, a woman with a mysterious past and a determination on par with Clay Mosby's. Curtis Wells also gets a new gunsmith, a mysterious and feisty woman named Mattie Shaw.
A vicious new breed of killer is stalking the west Texas plains and only an old fashioned kind of lawman can stop him. That man is legendary Texas Ranger Woodrow Call. Renowned as the greatest manhunter on the Southwest frontier, Calls mission will pit him against his deadliest adversary ever and lead him to the spectacular conclusion of the epic that began with the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove.
A prequel to the award winning Lonesome Dove, this story is set in the Texas Republic in the early 1840's, where the Anglo, Hispanic and Comanche cultures fight over the same harsh land. We are introduced to Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call who are young Texas Rangers ripe for adventure. They get it with the Texas-Santa Fe expedition, an ill-conceived effort on the part of some freebooters and adventurers to capture Santa Fe and annex New Mexico.
Comanche Moon, the prequel to McMurtry's bestselling and Pulitzer Prize-winning book, "Lonesome Dove follows Texas Rangers Augustus "Gus" McCrae (Zahn) and Woodrow F. Call (Urban), now in their middle years, as they continue to deal with the ever-increasing tensions of adult life--Gus with his great love, Clara Forsythe (Cardellini), and Call with Maggie Tilton (Banks), the young prostitute who loves him and bears him his son, Newt (Joseph Castanon). Kilmer plays Captain Inish Scull, a Yankee aristocrat and hero of the recently concluded Mexican War. Griffiths plays Inez Scull, the Captain's sexy wife who doesn't hesitate to fill her time with other men when he's away from home. Wes Studi plays Comanche Chief Buffalo Hump.