John Wayne Meets Clint Eastwood In The Best Neo-Western Series Of All Time

After joining Screen Rant in January 2025, Guy became a Senior Features Writer in March of the same year, and now specializes in features about classic TV shows. With several years' experience writing for and editing TV, film and music publications, his areas of expertise include a wide range of genres, from comedies, animated series, and crime dramas, to Westerns and political thrillers.

Western icons don’t come any bigger than John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, the two greatest lead actors of the genre’s golden age. Most contemporary Western TV series pale in comparison to the best movies made by these two giants of their time. However, there is one crime series in the genre which has a protagonist worthy of comparison with both.

Back in 2010, the TV Western was mostly considered a thing of the past. That is, until Timothy Olyphant, the lead actor in the previous decade’s standout show in the genre, Deadwood, swaggered into Harlan County, Kentucky, as a haggard, hard-headed sharpshooter with the steely glare of Clint Eastwood and the droll one-liners of John Wayne at his finest.

Olyphant’s Raylan Givens is, quite simply, the best neo-Western character ever created. It’s primarily thanks to Givens that his show Justified is widely regarded as the pinnacle of modern-day TV Westerns. This series has it all, from suspenseful shootouts to the ultimate lawman’s quest to hunt down a dangerous fugitive.

It often feels like Sergio Leone’s Dollars trilogy and John Wayne’s most iconic Western movies all rolled into one. Justified might be set in the present, but Raylan Givens is akin to a mythical figure from the Old West, a maverick marshal who’ll stop at nothing to exact justice the way he sees fit.

Justified Is The Greatest Neo-Western TV Show Ever Made

Despite primarily taking place in Kentucky, thousands of miles from the American West, Justified is the definitive Western series of the 21st century. It puts an ingenious spin on classic genre tropes, from archetypal lawman Raylan Givens, to trigger-happy outlaw Boyd Crowder, and the woman they both love, saloon landlady Ava Crowder.

What truly makes Justified the best neo-Western show of all time, however, is that it doesn’t rely on the genre to tell its story. You don’t need to be remotely interested in Westerns to enjoy the series, which doubles up as a slow-burning crime thriller and a powerful interpersonal drama featuring a Shakespearian tragic arc.

At the same time, Western fans will find a rich tapestry of frontier traditions across Justified’s six seasons, as well as some of the genre’s finest onscreen exponents, from Sam Elliott to Gerald McRaney. What’s more, the show is underpinned thematically by its primary setting, one of rust-belt America’s most famous coal districts, Harlan County.

Justified draws just as much of its Western grit from this storied slice of real-life Americana as it does from the similarities Raylan Givens shares with legends of the genre. Nevertheless, it must be said that no other TV character has come this close to somehow finding a middle ground between John Wayne and Clint Eastwood.

Raylan Givens Is The Perfect Combination Of John Wayne And Clint Eastwood

Raylan Givens is every bit as gruff and world-weary as the biggest personalities the great John Wayne ever inhabited onscreen, including Ethan Edwards and Rooster Cogburn. He also has the same penchant for one-liners, and knows how to make one heck of an entrance. Indeed, Justified’s opening scene feels like TV’s version of the Ringo Kid’s introduction in Stagecoach.

Like the Duke’s hard-bitten old cowboys, though, Raylan has a soft center, and is deeply affected by those he cares about. He has an intransigent moral code, too, that pushes him into both heroic and antiheroic territory, depending on the circumstance. Just as Wayne’s words often work on behalf of his gun, some of Justified’s best quotes are Raylan’s threats to his enemies.

That isn’t to say that Raylan Givens is gun-shy. On the contrary, he’s the fastest-drawing U.S. marshal to grace the small screen since Gunsmoke’s Matt Dillon. He’s typically a lone gunman, who greets the antagonist in his eyeline with a piercing glare highly reminiscent of Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name.

In fact, Raylan has more in common with Eastwood’s legendary bounty hunter than the marshal characters we’re used to seeing in screen Westerns. He frequently operates beyond his legal purview, and regularly clashes with his superiors.

Justified is only about his struggle to carry out justice. It’s also the conflict within Raylan himself about the nature of justice in relation to the law, and to the community from which he originates.