Branded

Captain Jason McCord is a cavalry officer whose life is upended when he’s publicly accused of cowardice and expelled from the Army. Stripped of his rank and reputation, he wanders the West, taking whatever work he can find while people judge him by the charge rather than the man. Each episode drops him into a different town or situation where he has to deal with suspicion, crooked officials, and personal setbacks, and the show steadily reveals pieces of what led to his disgrace. It keeps the pace measured and the stakes personal, emphasizing moral choices and the social fallout of a ruined name instead of non-stop action or tidy resolutions.

Branded premiered on NBC in 1965 and ran through 1966. Created by Larry Cohen, it starred Chuck Connors as Jason McCord and aired in a Sunday evening slot, with Procter & Gamble listed as a sponsor.

The series ran only one season and did not pick up major Emmy or Golden Globe honors. At the time it wasn’t a prize-winner, though retrospective commentators often note its atypical tone for network Westerns and Connors’ solid, stoic lead work.

Though never a mainstream phenomenon, Branded influenced the move toward grittier, morally shaded Western storytelling on television. The recurring image of a discredited cavalry officer roaming the frontier stuck with some viewers, and the show is sometimes cited in discussions of revisionist Western themes that gained traction later in the 1960s.

Critical and viewer responses were mixed, the series holding a modest average rating from modern voters, around 6.65/10 from a small sample. Reviewers tended to praise Connors’ presence and the show’s willingness to question military honor, while criticism focused on a slower tempo and fewer gun-slinging set pieces than fans of traditional Westerns expected. Central themes include honor, reputation, and the limits of institutions.