A Nostalgic Roundup Along Happy Trails
July 30, 2003
Allessandra Stanley

....The last truly successful television western was "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," and not coincidentally it was almost entirely a woman's fantasy a postfeminist parable in which a beautiful Bostonian (Jane Seymour) has a medical career on the 19th-century frontier, adopts a family of adorable orphans and also has a sultry sex life with a noble man in Indian garb (actually a gorgeous, tanned white man raised by American Indians -- Joe Lando). The show ran from 1993 to 1998, and by the time it ended many women had found new, more contemporary forms of identification and escapism in shows like "Law & Order." "Dr. Quinn" still has devoted fans, but CBS craved younger viewers, audiences who had no vestigial affection for cattle drives, saloon fights, stampedes, petticoats and cavalry charges.

excerpt from longer article in New York Times