Trackdown (TV series)

Trackdown
Robert Culp as Hoby Gilman (1957)
Genre	Western
Written by	D.D. Beauchamp Frank Burt Fred Freiberger Norman Jacobs Christopher Knopf Sidney Marshall John McGreevey John Robinson Sam Peckinpah
Directed by	Thomas Carr Lawrence Dobkin Richard Donner Don McDougall R.G. Springsteen
Starring	Robert Culp Ellen Corby Peter Leeds Norman Leavitt James Griffith Gail Kobe Addison Richards
Theme music composer	William Loose and John Seely
Composer(s)	Harry King
Country of origin	USA
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	2
No. of episodes	70 plus pilot
Production
Producer(s)	Vincent M. Fennelly
Cinematography	Guy Roe
Running time	25 mins.
Release
Original network	CBS
Picture format	Black-and-white
Audio format	Monaural
Original release	October 4, 1957 – September 23, 1959
Chronology
Related shows	Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater Wanted: Dead or Alive

Trackdown is an American western television series starring Robert Culp that aired more than seventy episodes on CBS between 1957 and 1959. The series was produced by Dick Powell's Four Star Television and filmed at the Desilu-Culver Studio. Trackdown was a spin-off of Powell's anthology series, Dick Powell's Zane Grey Theater.

Trackdown stars Robert Culp as Texas Ranger Hoby Gilman. It is set in the 1870s after the American Civil War. In early episodes, stories focused on Gilman going to different Texas towns in pursuit of wanted fugitives. At mid-season, the series became set in the fictional town of Porter, in Central Texas, not the unincorporated community of Porter in Montgomery County northeast of Houston. The current Porter apparently did not exist until 1892, when a United States Post Office was first established there or perhaps a few years earlier but well after the fictional events of Trackdown.

Gilman is the de facto sheriff in Porter. His friends in the town include Henrietta Porter, portrayed by Ellen Corby (who later played Esther Walton on CBS's The Waltons). She is the widow of the town's founder and owns The Porter Enterprise newspaper. Occasionally, his duties as a Texas Ranger took him out of town, where he used his fast gun to "track down" and apprehend wanted criminals throughout the Lone Star State.