Maverick is an American Western television series with comedic overtones created by Roy Huggins. The show ran from September 22, 1957 to July 8, 1962 on TV and initially starred James Garner as Bret Maverick, an adroitly articulate cardsharp. Eight episodes into the first season, he was joined by Jack Kelly as his brother Bart Maverick, and for the next two-and-a-half seasons, Garner and Kelly alternated leads from week to week, sometimes teaming up for the occasional two-brother episode. The Mavericks were poker players from Texas who traveled all over the American Old West and on Mississippi riverboats, constantly getting into and out of life-threatening trouble of one sort or another, usually involving money, women, or both. They would typically find themselves weighing a financial windfall against a moral dilemma. More often than not, their consciences trumped their wallets since both Mavericks were intrinsically ethical.
When Garner left the series after the third season due to a legal dispute, Roger Moore was added to the cast as their cousin Beau Maverick. Again, the two starring Mavericks would generally alternate as series leads, with the occasional "team-up" episode. Robert Colbert appeared later in the fourth season as a third Maverick brother, Brent Maverick, replacing Moore. No more than two of the series leads ever appeared together in the same episode, and usually only one.
For the fifth and final season, the show returned to a "single Maverick" format, and all new episodes starred Jack Kelly as Bart Maverick.