Welcome to my Television Reviews Page! This is where you will find all of the Reviews from the Featured Television Blog of the month! It is organized in a Television poster Table of Contents, so you can scroll down for the Television Review your looking for easily!
AUGUST 2022:
A FAMILIAR RETURN WEST….
Taylor Sheridan never really saw 1883 as a limited series, he has always seen it as more of a Western film clocking in a little over ten hours. But it appears this mindset allowed him to make better Television. Every episode watched was like watching an hour long Western with stunning visuals that it elicited an emotional response at times. There is no denying the breathtaking landscape that Sam Elliott, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill are backlit with in the Paramount+ series. For Taylor Sheridan, the West and its stunning landscape of beauty are just as much a vital character on the series, as Elsa Dutton is. Without either, the story never works. Yes, James Dutton, played by Tim McGraw, and Margaret Dutton, played by Faith Hill, are vital to the Dutton Legacy, but it is Elsa who sets them on the path that will lead us eventually to John Dutton III. This being said, without revealing a major plot point for those that might be reading and have not watched it. Elsa and the West are the story of 1883. Without the two, none of this would have worked.
CONCURRING AGREEMENT…
Taylor Sheridan agreed, telling Paramount+, there was no series without Isabel May cast to play the eldest daughter of James Dutton. The Dutton family is the vessel in which Sheridan chooses to take us through the American History and what that journey West might have been like for the early pioneers of the United States. He even looks at the brutal relationship between white settlers and the Native Americans who lived in The Great Plains, long before pioneers and the U.S. Government decided to make it their home. So many elements of our Western History, and that of the American Civil War play a part in this Yellowstone Origin Story. There is the presence of Thomas, played by LaMonica Garrett, he is the black ex-Buffalo Soldier Sargent in the war, and is now working as an agent for The Pinkerton National Detective Agency. He is the partner of Shea Brennan, played by Sam Elliott, who is tasked with getting a group of immigrant pioneers into Oregon safely. Thomas and Shea, come across James Dutton by chance, but witness his value when an attempt is made to steal his wagon by thieves. All of this, part of the bits and pieces of real American History that Sheridan has put in the path of the Dutton family as they make their journey West.
VITAL TALKIE…
As always with Sheridan’s work, the writing is some of the best. There were critics who weren’t so sure of Elsa’s need to narrate the entire series, but knowing the end, I feel it was important for this journey to be seen from her point of view. So many the scenes in the series are filled with great dialogue and conversations, but its Elsa’s narration of her experience with the West that truly makes it an emotional series. I found so much of what she says about nature and how we as a people and society function in it and take for granted the simple beauty of it, thereby, giving over control to it to be profoundly relevant in the current world. It is through Elsa that viewers see the horror and beauty of humanity through a will to survive and make something for ourselves. The sheer brutality of living.
ALL THE EPISODIC FEELS…
Every episode of the series, captivates the audience with its Western background and a cast so perfect for the roles they were playing, you almost feel as if they were born to play them. A few of the episodes even leave viewers in sheer agony after they end. Taylor Sheridan proved with the first episode of Yellowstone, that every character is expendable making his writing all the better. The character arc of Shea Brennan also allowed Sheridan to write about what it is to live with grief, how it can compound a person and shatter their existence. He looked at the tragedy and grief of war, and when even though it seems for a good cause, those who live to tell the tale of surviving war, are left to be half of who they were before they entered into it. Feeling the sacrifices, they made to serve, were for nothing. Again, showing viewers the brutality of living.
ENTERTAINING HISTORY LESSON…
Sheridan gave us a look back to a history in America when we suffered some of the worst atrocities and tragedy, sometimes put upon us by ourselves, in the name of staking a claim and building a nation of people. He deals with the demons of that past, but he also shows viewers the elements of that ugly nature that lead us to stabilize as a nation and do great things. For without the settlement of the West, the Industrial Revolution that went on to define us as a nation at the end of the 19th century could never have occurred. 1883, showed viewers that it is still within man’s inherent nature to take what he wants and then fight to the death for it, but also shows that without these moments in our history, there could have been no progress. The end of the cowboy era and the chaos that was involved in settling The Great Plains was partially due to a society that became more civilized, opting for jobs in steel factories and mining, over the life on the open range cattle driving and possible outlaw living. People were being given options, to build for themselves a life out of the progress that came with industrialization and technology.
OUT WEST WITH THE GREATEST…
Some still believe, John Ford, born 1895 and died 1973, to be the greatest of all American directors. I am not sure I’d say ALL directors, I would say he’s the greatest director of Westerns. He did more than most directors of his time, to document the passages of time in our American History. Considering the time, that Ford grew up in, his films were never seen by him to be period pieces taking place in the West. To John Ford, they were fairly recent accounts of events that had not too long ago occurred. But Ford will go down in film history as one of the best directors that was able to portray the West in film.
SINCE THEY’RE THE WEST’S BEST, THEY’RE WESTIES…
In my recommendation, I compared Taylor Sheridan to John Ford, because so much of how he handles telling the story of the American frontier and West is rooted in how the historically famous director of Westerns told those same stories. Faith Hill, Isabel May and Sam Elliott discussed the brutal filming of 1883, and how they knew regardless of how uncomfortable they were on location with the harsh winter of Montana, or that the women cast in the series were told not to use makeup or shave because they were things did not exist in 1883, they knew that it would all be worth it when the series was released, and people saw Taylor Sheridan’s vision come to life. This too, reminded me of the way Ford would make his films, he often shot his films on location in the desert or prairie. His cast and crew would live on location as if they were on a cattle drive and ate from the chuckwagon while sleeping in tents. Sheridan adopted these same principles when filming 1883.
MY DARLING FORD STOCK…
Also, Like Ford, Sheridan will often use the same cast of actors and work with them repeatedly on different productions. Ford referred to the same cast of actors he worked with as his “stock company”, which most often included John Wayne. Even though, his best western to date, is considered to be My Darling Clementine, in which he did not cast Wayne, in the main part of Wyatt Earp, but rather Henry Fonda. Some believe this may be due to seeing Wayne as the embodiment of what the West represented, and the story he was telling was about the period of the West, when the people began to be a more civilized society and the wilderness in the West that John Wayne once represented was now being tamed and therefore, Fonda better represented Earp than Wayne would have.
SHERIDAN’S WEST….
Sheridan has used that same history of the West to background his original stories of frontiersmen, pioneers, cowboys, a sheriff, outlaws, and most of all cattle ranchers. He decided not to recycle the same stories we had all heard before and seen in Westerns for decades. Taylor decided to tell new stories and used our American history to define the characters he created. Sheridan has often said that he chose to tell these original stories because it seemed we had stopped making them about American Frontiersmen. And he wanted to show viewers that they exist in modern America and didn’t just exist in the settling of The Great Plains.
SIMILAR FUTURES IN THE WEST…
I didn’t just compare Sheridan to Ford, because they both made Westerns in a similar capacity, but also because Sheridan has arguably made some of the best television in years and has already even been nominated for an Academy Award in 2016 for Screenwriting the Neo-Western film Hell or High Water. And February 2021, Sheridan continued his relationship with ViacomCBS, and extended his three-year pact to include an additional five years bringing him through 2028. The contract renewal included 1883 along with 1932, which continues the Yellowstone Origin Story into The Great Depression era for America. Taylor seems to be on the same trajectory of the historic Western film director, thereby creating similarities that can be compare to.
You can watch the 2016 Official Trailer for Hell or High Water here:
You can watch the 2017 Official Trailer for Wind River here:
WILD AGAIN OUT WEST…
Sheridan has reinvigorated audiences with Westerns, and viewers are asking for more based on the ratings his Yellowstone series, and now its limited series prequel, keep producing. He has broken records for both Paramount Network and Paramount+, with four seasons of Yellowstone on the network and a fifth season starting on November 13, 2022, and 1883, on the subscription based streaming affiliate. High end Hollywood productions of Westerns all but disappeared from theaters and viewers eyes by the early 1930’s. This happened for a number of reasons, one of them being the failure of several big-budget epics from 1930 to 1931, while the studios were also facing the costly conversion into what is known in film history as “Talkies”. With the Depression occurring at the very same time, and the full impact of it being felt by the film industry, the genre of films stalled out and they flourished as low-budget productions. It wasn’t until John Ford revived them in the late 1930’s and made Westerns into the beginning of the 1960’s that they would again reach viewers as they did before the 1930’s. Another similarity Sheridan has with Ford, the revitalization of the Western. And since Yellowstone, that slow western horse seems to be picking up speed again with Taylor Sheridan at the reigns.
THE WEST AND ITS WHITENESS…
Hollywood would once again decide to stop producing them in the 1960’s, when they again proved not profitable for viewers. This time around though it would not be an economic catastrophe that would bring about the decision. It would be due to the inaccurate portrayal of the West and the backlash suffered from whitewashing such a diverse history from our past. Westerns have always had problems with their depiction of Native Americans and Blacks when telling these stories and has often left out the contribution of both, along with other diverse backgrounds of people that were responsible in the settling of the West. As viewers became more aware of the wronged history and demanded proper representation, the profitability of Westerns decreased; while the outrage over lack of representation and inaccurate accounts of history increased. It seemed easier for Hollywood to just stop making Westerns.
THE WHITE PLAGUE…
Westerns were largely underperforming at the box office against much bigger budget films in the 1960’s, just as in the 1930’s. Studios are always considering the profitability of a film, and its cast of stars, over critical acclaim for a film made well. The choice between the two is always clear when studios are in the business to make money. It is never lucrative for a big budget Hollywood Studio to put itself in the position of garnering critical acclaim over making a profit. That would be the motivation to film progress later, for Independent Films and the independent studios that would sacrifice profit for critical acclaim. Instead, with the profitability down and the backlash over casting in Western films, Hollywood studios would move away from making Westerns if they couldn’t continue to make them for a wider audience. Taylor Sheridan has doused that logic in gasoline and lit it with the biggest match he could find. Westerns are starting to make a comeback, and Taylor Sheridan is no doubt a part of that wider audience comeback.
THE WEST RENEWED…
The last five years or so, we have seen a rebirth of the Western occur in both cinemas and Television. There has been a slew of Western genre films released since 2016, but a good majority of them have been direct to video releases and not backed by a major big budget at a large studio. Most of the Western films released have been through independent studios that didn’t use a large budget to make the film and tend to find their audience viewership in streaming and not in theaters. And the other few that took a big release in theaters first, saw a limited run, due to releasing on Netflix worldwide. The slew of television shows has often been on cable networks with a budget large enough to pull off a western production within a reasonable budget. HBO has been responsible for two shows in the last ten years alone, while the other western genre shows could also be found on Netflix.
You can watch the 2018 Official Trailer for The Ballad of Buster Scruggs here:
You can watch the 2020 Official Trailer for News of the World here:
You can watch the 2021 Official Trailer for The Harder They Fall here:
You can watch the 2021 Official Trailer for The Power of the Dog here:
You can watch the Official Trailer for Season 1 of Justified here:
You can watch the Official Trailer for Season 1 of Longmire here:
You can watch the Official Trailer for Season 1 of Deadwood here:
You can watch the 2019 Official Trailer for Deadwood: The Movie here:
You can watch the Official Trailer for Season 1 of Westworld here:
NEW WORLD FOR REBIRTH…
The reason we may be seeing a rebirth in the genre of Westerns is because Television and filmmakers no longer stay within the lines or box that a genre may confine them to, filmmakers have found ways over the last few decades to create subgenres of films and television in order to fully fulfill their vision but remain in the genre in which they were inspired to make the film or series. This is where Taylor Sheridan comes in, and why he is doing so well with the Western genre, even when Hollywood can have apprehensions about investing in making a western for television or film. Taylor Sheridan’s West would be considered the genre of “Neo-Western”, with the exception of 1883, which is as Western as the genre can get. The Neo-Western is a sub-genre of film or television, that takes the old themes of Westerns, and then creates a modern variation of those themes to reach a wider audience. Neo-Western is described as including in the sub-genre any plots that relate to rebellious protagonists with anti-hero qualities, with the location of the films or series, usually including vast landscapes and rugged scenery. It will more often than not feature a large dose of violence and gun-fighting. Yellowstone would be considered as a Neo-Western Television Drama.
WHEN THE WEST TURNS YELLOWSTONE…
Yellowstone, stars Kevin Costner, as the patriarch cattle rancher John Dutton III, who’s Montana ranch sits along the lines of the Yellowstone National Park and is one of the largest ranches in the region. The series has been a ratings gem since its premiere in 2018, and has become a powerhouse for the Paramount Network. Sheridan never anticipated he would receive the success he has with the series, nor that it would spin-off into a franchise and allow him origin stories to tell the Dutton legacy. This all came to pass after he shattered viewer records in the first season and has continued to do so with every season. While Yellowstone takes place in the modern day West of Montana, the Dutton family legacy is rooted in the American History of the West and the settlement of the American frontier.
AND THEN GOES BACK TO 1883…
1883, became a great opportunity to start to tell the story of how the Dutton family came to own so much prime real estate in Montana, but it also allowed Sheridan the opportunity to get the representation history right for television and weave elements our American History in the West, into a series about the most loved family in Montana. Sheridan also handles with care the history of the Native Americans throughout that Western history. He explains why there is so much violence, not that Native Americans were violent. He was able to weave that history into the correlating storylines of the Dutton family with that of the Native Americans. And Sheridan does this without ignoring the atrocities committed against the Native Americans in pursuit of the settling the American frontier.
WHICH PATH WEST TO TAKE…
I am torn between saying 1883 may be better than Yellowstone, but I am also very invested in stories that teach us a little history along the way. Sheridan writes characters with full development making the prequel possible. Sheridan didn’t just write the Dutton family for one series; he wrote a family tree, and its branches are ever growing and expanding. He found a different way to tell these stories and the reception of the series has been great. Most viewers had hoped for a second season of 1883, and while it was entertained for a minute, Paramount+ announced that there would be no second season but said that the Dutton family origin story would continue.
A FAMILIAR FACE…
1883 is a beautiful trip through the West chorographically speaking, I was amazed with every episode and the look of the vast landscapes, and the feel of the West that was brought to every scene. This may partly be because a majority of the series was filmed on Sheridan’s own property, and he was able to do as he pleased to get his vision for the series right. His version of the West may seem to be the best as of late, simply because he is writing what he knows. Sheridan grew up in Cranfills Gap, Texas on the family ranch. He says, that had his family not lost the ranch in the 1990’s, he would still be living on it today. His parents struggle with losing their ranch seems to be a partial inspiration for his screenplay for the 2016 film, Hell or High Water. Sheridan dropped out of Texas State University and moved to Austin, mowing lawns and painting houses to pay the bills. It was while looking for jobs in a shopping mall that he was approached by a talent scout and offered a chance to go to Chicago and pursue an acting career. He lived in both, New York and Los Angeles, during his time as an actor. He is known best, as an actor, for his role on the acclaimed FX series Sons of Anarchy, that ran from 2008 – 2014, where he played Deputy Chief David Hale.
You can watch the Official Trailer for Season 1 of Sons of Anarchy here:
THE BUSIEST GUY IN TELEVISION…
But seeing as Sheridan is Yellowstone’s creator, writer, producer and even director at times, his dance card is pretty full these days, and he has put his career as an actor to the back of that line. Sheridan isn’t going anywhere anytime soon though, and most viewers are glad. Television had been lagging in the quality category for a while, it seemed the best of television was far behind us and some worried that streaming would change the way Television is made and that the quality that once went into making a great series had left with the cord cutters. But the relationship that Sheridan has with ViacomCBS for the next five years and the preview of what’s in store from Sheridan and Paramount+, says the best may be yet to come, and Sheridan is going to keep making the best for viewers as long as they keep watching.
You can watch a clip of what’s coming soon from Taylor Sheridan and Paramount+ here:
COMING SOON…
Taylor Sheridan will be busy for the next five years churning out more stories about the modern day frontiersmen and the history of the West, with the 1883 spin-off, Bass Reeves premiering this fall, starring David Oyelowo, as the historical American law enforcement official, noted for being the first black deputy U.S. marshal West of the Mississippi River. And soon after that is 1932, starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, and it will continue the Dutton origin story, through a now grown, John Dutton Sr, a young John Dutton II, who is John Dutton III‘s father and will have Prohibition and the Great Depression as the backdrop to this particular Yellowstone origin story. And coming November 13, 2022, on Paramount+, from Taylor Sheridan, is Tulsa King starring Sylvester Stallone.
All ten episodes of 1883 are available to stream now on Paramount+, or you can pick up your DVD, Blu-Ray, or 4K UHD copy available on August 31, 2022.
All four seasons of Yellowstone are now streaming on Peacock TV or are available on DVD, Blu-Ray and 4K UHD. Season five premieres November 13, 2022, on Paramount Network.
Hell or High Water and Wind River are currently streaming on Netflix and are also available to stream on all platforms, or you can also buy them on DVD, Blu-Ray or 4K UHD.