It is considered "the first attempt ... to produce an hour-long western series with the main character being an attorney in the formal sense.

"[1] Temple Houston was the only program which Jack Webb sold to a network during his ten months as the head of production at Warner Bros.

Author-historian (and attorney) Francis M. Nevins asserts of the first episode entitled "The Twisted Rope", "Clearly, the concept here is Perry Mason out West", going so far as to note that Temple Houston's court opponent "apes Hamilton Burger by accusing Houston of 'prolonging this trial with a lot of dramatic nonsense'".

[1] The producers tried to avoid any storylines that would embarrass the two surviving children of Temple Houston who were still living when the series aired.

The series was produced by Warner Bros. Television and Apollo Productions, a company co-owned by star Jeffrey Hunter, who had demanded to produce it in exchange for a film and television commitment to Warner Bros.[5] By December 1963, the series was rated 31st of the 32 new shows that season.

[9] In the United Kingdom the series was shown on BBC One television between October 1964 and July 1965, inspiring one of the few pieces of memorabilia from the show—a 1965 British annual.