Rod Taylor starred as Sheriff Jonathan Grail, an outlaw turned lawman who had to chase down his former partners who robbed a bank (Cattlemen's Bank & Trust) in his town. However, the arrest was interrupted by an electrical storm in an Indian burial ground which time warped the sheriff and the outlaws nearly a hundred years into the future...to the year 1986.

 "Sheriff Jonathan Grail was mad. Who'd hit a bank in his town? Harland Pike-me, Wolfsen Lucas, William Pike and Isaiah "Ice" McAdams, known collectively as the Pike Gang. Grail had once been partners in crime with the four of us. But now, all bets were off. The showdown was interrupted, however, by the Almighty who sent us all sailing into the 20th century. And what a century it is. But we weren't what you'd call ordinary men. So we dug in, tried to adapt and started a detection agency to put beans on the table. And in the process ran head on into Deputy Maggie Randall. Things may be different this century but there's plenty of work to be done. Because one thing's bound to be true. The bad hombres will always outnumber the good."  -- Opening Narration

Finding they were trapped in the future, Grail and the members of the Pike Gang took the gold they had procured from their 1899 bank heist and bought a ranch (the Double Eagle) from which they operated the Double Eagle Ranch Detective Agency. 

Listen to Theme Music

With the help of their Houston, Texas neighbor Maggie Randall (Christine Belford), a modern-day sheriff, they used their rough and tumble ways and code of the west bravura to catch bad guys in the 20th century.

The members of Grail's detection agency included:

• William Lucking as Harland Pike, the leader of the Pike gang after Grail left to be sheriff.
• Richard Roundtree as Isaiah 'Ice' McAdams, an escaped slave from New Orleans turned outlaw.
• Charles Napier as Wolfsen Lucas, who cared for the group's spiritual needs. He spouts scripture occasionally. 
• Patrick Houser as William "Billy" Pike, Harland's younger brother, He enrolled in adult education to learn to read.

When Grail and his boys were about to go serious on someone, they spouted a series of sayings. Here's them going into action:

The DEDA activities in the modern world included:

• Helping  immigrant shopkeepers harassed by protection rackets.
• Going to New Orleans in search of treasure that Ice buried  at the end of the 1800s.
• Coming to the aid of a man and his daughter who run an independent taxi-cab company.
• Helping Maggie's friend held captive by her mobster husband.
• Aiding  a TV evangelist threatened by a religious fanatic.
• Stopping a land developer from taking over a ghost town.
• Rescuing call girls from their abusive Las Vega pimp.
• Avoiding sniper fire on a dark and storm night - the same kind of night that brought boys through time.

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Screen Captures - Series Opening

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TRIVIA NOTE: During a series of interviews in which Rod Taylor promoted the series, he offered this summary of the show:

'The whole idea is for us to bring everything from the 1890s with us. The clothes, the horses, our attitudes, our way of doing business. You bring that to the computer age and it becomes what they call contrapuntal. The humor comes out of the contrasts and contradictions. It was funny as hell. We'd face a band of 50 terrorists with great bravery -- but a pop-up toaster would scare the living daylights out of us."

When Grail and Wolfsen recalled how they first met on episode "Birthday," the producers of the show used scenes from the western series THE OREGON TRAIL (in which Rod Taylor  and Charles Napier appeared as a wagon train pioneer and frontier scout.).

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External Links

• Outlaws (IMDb)

 

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