Netflix dropped the trailer Wednesday for “Wyatt Earp and The Cowboy War” and it looks like it is reinventing both the Western and docuseries in one show.
The dulcet tones of Ed Harris narrate the gorgeous trailer for this fresh new look at how the West was won. The series follows the “legendary feud between Wyatt Earp and Ike Clanton,” which “unfolds through vivid reenactments in this gritty docudrama about the gunfight that defined an era,” according to Netflix.
But the trailer also suggests we’re being introduced to a whole new way to watch documentaries. Sure, dramatizations aren’t necessarily a new accompaniment to a documentary. But this one doesn’t look totally cringe and tragic like literally every other one ever — except for those on “Drunk History.”
Wyatt Earp is arguably one of America’s most famous frontiersman. While many considered him a fearless lawman, he was apparently an “itinerant saloonkeeper, gambler, lawman, gunslinger, and confidence man but was perhaps best known for his involvement in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral,” according to Britannica. (RELATED: Emily Blunt’s New Western Will Give You Chills)
The shootout at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona, happened Oct. 26, 1881. If you don’t know the story already, I won’t give you any spoilers (your teachers should have).
The series drops Aug. 21 on Netflix.