Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticThe CBS drama “Walker, Texas Ranger” — co-created by eventual Oscar-winner Paul Haggis and airing from 1993 to 2001 — was foundational to the myth of Chuck Norris. Sure, the actor had been in plenty of martial arts films before, but the idea of Norris as all-powerful that flourished in corny online jokes was nourished by hundreds of weekly episodes depicting hand-to-hand combat as the tool of justice in the Lone Star State. It was a formula that would seem to resist modernization, both because its earnestness is out of vogue in cynical times and because this is an especially precarious moment to launch a big-tent show anchored in the world of law enforcement.
