Chuck Norris & Taylor Sheridan’s 9-Season Action Crime Series Officially Invented Neo-Westerns

Published Sep 15, 2026, 4:30 PM EDT After 18 months at Screen Rant, Guy became Classic TV Editor in September 2026, and specializes in leading features content about shows from decades gone by. Having written for and editing several TV, film and music publications, his areas of expertise include comedy and satire, animation, crime drama, Westerns, and political thrillers. Decades before Taylor Sheridan made television’s neo-Western subgenre his own with shows like Yellowstone and Landman, he appeared in a Chuck Norris crime procedural that almost single-handedly invented the small-screen contemporary Western. Wearing a stetson hat and brown sheriff's waistcoat, Norris introduced anyone stepping the wrong side of the law to his signature martial arts for nine seasons on CBS. By the time his work was done, Walker, Texas Ranger had revitalized the Western genre in its own way, and laid the groundwork for one of its actors to take things further. This classic network series came long after the golden age of classic TV Westerns had ended, but it also predated the era of prestige series like Deadwood and Justified. Nowadays, there are almost too many neo-Western TV shows to watch on streaming, as every platform out there is attempting to capitalize on the unprecedented success of Taylor Sheridan’s ever-expanding TV empire. But when Sheridan starred opposite Norris for a one-off cameo in Walker, Texas Ranger way back in 1995, this series was out on its own. More than 30 years later, there are clearly elements of the CBS drama that haven’t aged so well. Nevertheless, it remains a game-changer for Western TV shows, without which neither the Sheridanverse nor any other neo-Western series, for that matter, would exist today. Chuck Norris’ Walker, Texas Ranger Was The Prototype Neo-Western TV Show Image via CBS The year is 1993, and the notion of a Western TV show set in the present day is almost completely alien to the experience of viewers at home. The idea has already made it to the big screen in various guises, from Paul Newman’s 1963 movie Hud, to the landmark 1972 survival thriller Deliverance. CBS had tried it on the small screen once before, but Glenn Ford’s southwestern crime drama Cade's County was pulled after just a single season. So when the network began developing a neo-Western series fronted by hirsute martial artist Chuck Norris, who’d play a Texas Ranger descended from Native Americans, there must have been more than a little trepidation behind the scenes. Nevertheless, Walker, Texas Ranger was a massive success. For all its gimmicky combat moves, outlandish storylines, and product placements for Chrysler’s line of Dodge pickup trucks, the series pushed the bounds of what a TV Western could be. Up to that point, viewers had grown accustomed to every show in the genre being set in the 19th century. In part thanks to Norris’ huge profile, it became a cultural phenomenon, which ushered in a new era of contemporary Western lawmen like Raylan Givens and Walt Longmire. It’s no surprise, then, that Walker, Texas Ranger achieved renewed success on streaming earlier this year, following the death of its central star. Taylor Sheridan Made His Screen Debut On Walker, Texas Ranger Perhaps it was fate that led Taylor Sheridan to make his TV debut in a neo-Western series set in his home state of Texas. His role might have been inconsequential for the show itself, but it set in motion the chain of events that led him to become the foremost name in contemporary Western television. In Walker, Texas Ranger, Sheridan plays a brash young drag racer named Vernon, who becomes a target of the title character's crime-fighting efforts in the season 3 “War Zone”. Although he only makes this one-off appearance in the series, his performance resulted in a succession of other bit-part roles that culminated in his 2008 breakthrough in Sons of Anarchy. This show about a Californian biker gang returned Taylor Sheridan to the world of neo-Westerns, 13 years after Walker, Texas Ranger had allowed him to get his foot in the door of Hollywood. By the late noughties, momentum was already building around contemporary TV Westerns, and Sheridan would have his own series in the subgenre on the air inside a decade. Release Date 1993 - 2001-00-00 Network CBS Directors Michael Preece, Tony Mordente, Jerry Jameson, Christian I. Nyby II, Alexander Singer, Michael Vejar, Andrew Stevens, Chuck Bowman, James Darren, Karl Kases, Lee H. Katzin, Vern Gillum Cast Clarence Gilyard Jr. Jimmy Trivette