'Quick Draw' hits the funny bone of Great Bend

It’s not often Great Bend is on the cutting edge of comedy.

A Hulu original comedy, “Quick Draw” pokes good-natured fun at 19th-century Great Bendians, forensics law and order, the Bloody Benders, grasshopper plagues and pretentious people with Harvard degrees.

The show is rapidly gaining a cult-like following. Fans are pushing a petition for Hulu to produce more than just two seasons.

John Lehr, the star of the show and its co-creator, plays Sheriff John Henry Hoyle, a lawman who is – did we mention? – Harvard educated. In real life Lehr was born in Overland Park and graduated from Shawnee Mission West High School in 1984. He did not go to Harvard; he went to Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago to be a teacher but turned to comedic acting instead.

Lehr’s parents, now deceased, were from Wichita and El Dorado. His 84-year-old uncle from Park City, David Lehr, calls his nephew a character.

“He’s crazy,” the elder Lehr said. “John is a heck of an actor. … Everybody in the family follows along with what he is doing because no one else in this family is an actor. I think what he is doing is special. Word gets spread around he’s pretty good.”

The show will be something the Lehr family can talk about at the next family reunion in December when they meet at a Bel Aire church, David Lehr said.

Creating a show

The half-hour show uses improvisational comedy, meaning there is a script but no written dialogue. What dialogue the actors use is made up on the spot.

In describing the show, think “Gunsmoke“ crossed with “Blazing Saddles” and then add a heavy dose of “Saturday Night Live.”

It is adult humor. The cast and producers know just enough Kansas history to be wickedly funny.

Two years ago Hulu, a website that provides on-demand video streaming, approached Lehr and co-creator Nancy Hower and asked them to produce an original show.

“We were talking about doing something historical and using our improv-hybrid comedy style,” Lehr said. “One of my friends from Shawnee Mission West was getting his Ph.D. on Southwest Native American Studies in Santa Fe and I went to visit. When I came back, I said, ‘Nancy, we’ve got to do a Western.’”

And like the Hollywood TV Westerns of old, the Kansas landscape in “Quick Draw” is sometimes portrayed with mountains in the background. .

The producers didn’t want to do a show with Dodge City as a focus, Lehr said, because it seemed too large of a community and “Gunsmoke” had already been its focus.

Great Bend, he said, was the right size.

“We borrowed the name Great Bend and used a few historical characters from the Hays area,” he said.

Gaining popularity

Fans of the show have supposedly taken to drinking games, taking a gulp of beer each time Sheriff Hoyle mentions he’s a Harvard graduate, Lehr said. The show’s cast members were recently invited to Harvard to attend the Hasty Pudding Club.

“It was great,” Lehr said. “They loved the show.”

Kansas was a logical choice because so much Old West lore begins in Kansas, Lehr said. The show draws references from the Kansas territorial days of the border wars between pro-slavery and abolitionist forces, conflicts with Native Americans and the arrival of cowboys and cow towns.

Hulu, Lehr said, has done minimal marketing on the show. Mostly its success is due to a faithful grassroots following.

“Hulu is thrilled with the numbers,” Lehr said. “We broke a Hulu record on Memorial Day for the numbers of people watching us. We are trending up and people are posting about us on Tumblr and Facebook. There’s like a groundswell of fans on the comment section of Hulu.”

But what do people in Great Bend think?

“It is great exposure for the community,” said Cris Collier, executive director of the Great Bend Convention & Visitors Bureau. “It is done with great humor.”

For now, the future of the show may be in jeopardy, Lehr said.

“Hulu hasn’t told us if there will be a third season,” he said. “We are sitting around biting our fingernails waiting to see.”

The last show of season two will be broadcast on Hulu on Thursday.

This story was originally published September 26, 2014 at 8:43 PM with the headline "'Quick Draw' hits the funny bone of Great Bend."