Wanted Dead or Alive is an American Western television series starring Steve McQueen as bounty hunter Josh Randall.

He also settles a family feud, frees unjustly jailed or sentenced men, helps an amnesia victim recover his memory, and finds missing husbands, sons, fathers, a fiancée, a suitor, a daughter who had been captured many years earlier by Indians, an Army deserter, a pet sheep, and even Santa Claus.

[5]: 50 McQueen had a reputation for being difficult to work with, and he fired three stunt men within the first day's filming, including Richard Farnsworth.

[12] Although the show and its episodes are fiction, bounty hunters were common in the American West, and there is some historical basis for the stories.

[5]: 51  A number of additional shooting locations were used, with the outdoor action sequences of several episodes shot on the famed Iverson Movie Ranch in Chatsworth, California.

[5]: 52  The Mare's Leg was a shortened Winchester Model 1892 .44-40, with a gun belt that held .45-70 cartridges that, although they couldn't be fired from the weapon, looked more intimidating.

Wanted Dead or Alive was one of the several shows that came to define the "adult Western" of the era, with an attractive leading character in the primary role.

[5]: 52  McQueen's character was a man of few words and showed little emotion, often appearing to be interested more in the bounty hunter's reward than in justice.

[12] McQueen initially had been reluctant to do a Western, but when the opportunity arose for the character to be less of the traditional hero, he felt he was able to bring more of himself into a realistic portrayal of the bounty hunter.

From September 1960 until March 1961, it aired on Wednesday nights, 8:30–9 p.m.[18]: 1485 On June 7, 2005, New Line Home Entertainment released season 1 of Wanted Dead or Alive on DVD in Region 1.

[citation needed] In June 2009, Mill Creek Entertainment acquired the rights to the series under license from copyright holder StudioCanal, and has subsequently re-released the first two seasons.

[5]: 53  A review in Variety, September 10, 1958, noted that McQueen's characterization of the bounty hunter was "almost stuffy in its allegiance to the breed.

[5]: 89 In 1986, New World Pictures adapted the series into a low-budget film of the same title;[22] Rutger Hauer played modern-day bounty hunter Nick Randall, Josh's grandson.