I was very young when this was on, and the one single thing I remember about it is an episode where a character was drowned by a lynch mob in a big water butt. I was horrified by it at the time (which is probably why it stuck) and I can't imagine a similar scene in a modern prime time TV show.
shareAnnie I have been watching the episodes and haven't come across this one. I will post if I see it. It could have been on another series or maybe they aren't showing this one.
shareAnnie I think I have seen all the episodes that they are going to show. They showed most of the episodes on Encore Westerns but not all. I think they just picked the best ones. Unfortunately you episode must not have been chosen.
shareAre you absolutely sure it was Bat Masterson? As a kid I recall an episode of Gunsmoke - might hae been an early, half-hour one - where for some reason a man was put into a large sack and dunked into a water tower. It seems he irritated some of the townsfolk (because of his different, eastern ways?). It wasn't a lynch mob per se, they were just having fun: "It won't hurt him none". And then after the wooden beam the rope is attached to breaks in half, dropping him fully into the water: "Hey, we'd better get him out of there". They pull the sack, out and open it up. "He's dead. Drownded dead." All this while Matt Dillon's out of town. He rides back right after all this happens and admonished the now sullen crowd.
It must have affected me because I remember it pretty vividly after 50 years.
Could that have been it?
Sorry it's taken me so long to read your replies folks, thanks for your interest.
TRH, that sounds exactly like what I was thinking of - the horror of a prank gone wrong came back to me as I was reading your account. All these years I thought it was Bat Masterson - I do now remember the authority figure presiding over the sheepish crowd. Many thanks for that.