‘Dove’: No Horsepower in This Sequel

Meanwhile, back at the ranch. . . .

It’s been nearly five years since the original CBS airing of “Lonesome Dove,” an eight-hour miniseries that corralled big ratings, a Peabody Award and seven Emmys while returning the classic Western to prime-time’s center stage.

The best thing that “Lonesome Dove” had going for it was Robert Duvall as outgoing Gus McCrae, a fierce but decent and witty former Texas Ranger whose fateful trail drive from Texas to Montana became the heart of the adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s novel. The next best thing was Tommy Lee Jones as Gus’ close pal, the laconic Woodrow F. Call. Together, these aging characters gave “Lonesome Dove” its appealing knotty texture, and their constant playful bickering was more integral to this Old West saga than even the dusty frontier they rode across.

But poor Gus didn’t survive the great adventure, so scratch Duvall for the CBS sequel. And Jones turned it down. Largely for these reasons, “Return to Lonesome Dove” is an excruciatingly slow-rolling tumbleweed that retains none of the first story’s good stuff. (“Man, I loved the first one,” “CBS This Morning” co-host Harry Smith oozed Thursday during the first of the program’s obligatory, self-serving testimonials to the sequel.)

On the other hand, it does retain just about all of its flaws.

An hour shorter than the original (mercifully), “Return to Lonesome Dove” (the title is taken from the little town where the first story originated) airs at 9 p.m. Sunday and Tuesday and 8 p.m. Thursday on Channels 2 and 8.

It’s hard to make a realistic Western without at least some blood and gore. And this one is quite violent, has a body count in double figures and at one point features gratuitous close-ups of a severed head. Yet, inexplicably, CBS says that its miniseries carries no parental advisories.

Despite the absence of Jones, the sequel doesn’t sever the character he played. Jon Voight is the new Call, a former Texas Ranger captain who in 1878 aims to return to Montana with a herd of wild mustangs after fulfilling Gus’ last request, to be buried in Texas. To get top dollar, he first wants to breed them with the stock owned by the woman who was Gus’ true love, Ogallala, Neb., horse ranger Clara Allen (Barbara Hershey, inheriting the role from Anjelica Huston).

Helping will be another former Texas Ranger, Gideon Walker (William Petersen); Call’s friend Isom Pickett (Lou Gossett Jr.) and his wife, Sara (C.C.H. Pounder); the mysterious Agostina Vega (Nia Peeples) along with some Mexican vaqueros from her village; and of course Call’s straight-arrow son, young Newt Dobbs (the returning Rick Schroder).

Add to this multicultural clutter of characters the ruthless Scottish land baron Gregor Dunnegan (Oliver Reed) and his (has-the-hots-for-Newt) teen wife, Ferris (Reese Witherspoon); plus that murderous desperado Cherokee Jack Jackson (Dennis Haysbert). Like the renegade American Indian Blue Duck in the original, Cherokee Jack operates menacingly on the fringes of the story.

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Actually, that story (by John Wilder) consists of fringes, a sort of jumble of subplots clinging to a vacuum, each amazingly with its own crisis (ranging from a barroom shooting to a wildfire), yet none brawny or compelling enough to be sustaining.

“Lonesome Dove” tended to mosey along, and so does the sequel. In fact, under Mike Robe’s direction, “Return to Lonesome Dove” starts slowly and gets slower, so much so that you can get saddle sores just from watching.

Petersen fits into the saddle just about purfict . Hershey has the right spiny touch as Clara. And no one plays intimidating bullies better than Reed, even though his character never seems to know himself whether he’s good or evil.

As the story’s pivotal character, though, Voight’s Call is minimalist to the extreme. Perhaps the absence of the Gus-Woodrow relationship is too large a void for Woodrow alone to fill. Perhaps Voight is just not up to providing the edge and size that Jones gave Call. Whatever the reason, the new Call is such a stick-in-the-mud that he thickens and cakes up nearly every scene he’s in. This is the man who inspires such trust and loyalty on the part of his disciples?

And Schroder’s tediously righteous Newt continues to be a laborious slug of a saint whose clash of personalities with his gruff, uncompromising father (Montgomery Clift and the Duke in “Red River” would be too generous a comparison) is never believable. This is the clunker who fires the passion of the woman/child Ferris?

Chalk it up to arrested development, both for them and for “Return to Lonesome Dove.” A feller kin plain git bored.