I was thinking the other day about the television Westerns I grew up with in the (gulp) '50s and '60s Gunsmoke, Bonanza, Wanted: Dead or Alive, The Rifleman, Maverick, Sugarfoot, Bat Masterson... The genre petered out in the '70s, and '80s were virtually Western-less. What happened? The myth of Cowboys and Indians became less palatable. Maybe, too, advertisers got hipper to the fact that women and girls don't necessarily have the same passion for Old West TV as men and boys.

Into this vacuum rode The Young Riders. The ABC series, based loosely on the story of the Pony Express markedly different from the old generation of Westerns in a number of ways, a very important one of which is summed up in the second word of the title. True, a lot of the old Westerns had a Raffish Young Hero, yet often as not he was someone both the mother and the daughter of the house could go for. f they were watching. Michael Landon's Little Joe on Bonanza was the first genuine teen heartthrob on Western TV. But times were changing: Soon mothers and daughters were not interested in the same guy anymore. Young peple defected in droves after the '60s and for a long time advertisers had no idea how to get them back. Then came MTV.

The Young Riders is a post-MTV Western. The show's sponsors know who they are aiming for. Although a lot of the differences from the Westerns of yesteryear are simply concessions to the times, many are improvements. The old Westerns took place in a Hollywood Never-Never Land, where authenticity was barely a consideration. Look at the main street in any old-West rerun. It's always clean and dry. Look at photos of real old-West towns. All you ever see is mud.

There's plenty of mud on the Young Riders. In fact, the entire show is shot on location: The result is a movielike sheen and authority. The story lines also try for reality. Actual emotions -- fear, envy, reluctance to kill -- are addressed. The Indians are real Native Americans, not ethnic heavies. And firearms are actually treated with some seriousness. On the old Westerns, if someone got shot, he just fell over. Clean and dry. On a recent Young Riders, a fatally wounded bad guy went down in so contorted an attitude as to question the whole idea of shooting bad guys as fun. A radical concept.

And the cast is pretty good! First the old guys: ANTHONY ZERBE is a fine actor, although as Teaspoon, the Riders' scoutmaster, he isn't given much to do except look wisely grizzled. Melissa Leo brings wisdom and sex appeal to the role of den mother. As for the Riders themselves -- well, they grow on you. This being youth TV, a certain concession to ocomeliness must be made -- the hair is what is clean and dry in the updated Western -- and four out of six Riders are Brat Pack pretty. A jaded watcher might therefore home in on the misfits: YVONNE SUHOR as Lou and TRAVIS FINE as Ike McSwain. Both are interesting. But once you look past the handsome faces, so are TY MILLER, JOSH BROLIN, STEPHEN BALDWIN and GREGG RAINWATER. All have the periodic ability to convey the emotional complexity the ambitious scripts require.

With dramatic depth, up-to-the-second production values and moral scope -- not to mention cute guys -- the TV Western is no longer just for boys.

By James Kaplan (Mademoiselle 1990)