From one despicable, power-mad family to the next — can’t TV’s rich people manage to get along and conduct their business on the up-and-up? The answer, of course, is always no.
Still freshly depressed by HBO’s “Succession,” a coldhearted drama about siblings jockeying for control of their ailing father’s international media empire, we look yonder toward Montana, for the fledgling Paramount Network’s latest attempt at a big-tent series, “Yellowstone,” where the similarly spiteful Dutton clan struggles to keep a grip on their vast cattle ranch.
Don’t let the pretty horses and rosy sunsets fool you. “Yellowstone” is no more a Western, in the classic sense of the genre, than “Breaking Bad” or “Sons of Anarchy” were Westerns — which, one might argue, they were. Created, written and directed by Taylor Sheridan (who wrote the screenplays for the films “Hell or High Water” and “Wind River”), “Yellowstone” is firmly set in a modern, contentious West that Sheridan specializes in portraying. It’s a filthier, morally malnourished post-frontier of land disputes, rapacious development, bureaucratic corruption, tribal animosities, endangered resources, working-class poverty, tax-free casinos, drug abuse and anti-federal sentiment. John Wayne wouldn’t know where to start.
Kevin Costner, however, is fairly effective and convincing as John Dutton, the gruff and dangerously influential owner of Yellowstone Ranch, a vast property set roughly between the renowned national park for which it is named and the hip tourist town of Bozeman, Mont.; the Duttons claim theirs is the largest contiguous ranch in the country.