Yellowstone is a five-season modern western from Taylor Sheridan, the TV mogul behind hits like Landman and Tulsa King. It stars Kevin Costner as John Dutton, the patriarch of a Montana ranching family willing to defend his way of life at any cost, and the cost gets very high indeed.
Yellowstone was a massive hit that is still spawning prequels and spin-off shows. But it’s hardly the first TV series to wring drama out of our long obsession with gunslingers, lawlessness, and dysfunctional families. It’s also not the best. In fact, there are quite a few shows that beat Yellowstone at its own game.
The best Viking drama on Netflix isn’t Vikings — and George R.R. Martin agrees
The Last Kingdom beats Vikings at its own game.
Deadwood
The real wild west
Yellowstone is set in modern times, but it still channels the spirit of the old west as the Duttons fight off greedy politicians, violent gangs, and internal strife. It’s compelling, but it can also stretch believability a bit. Do modern ranchers really have to deal with this many assassinations?
That’s never a problem for Deadwood, one of the best HBO shows of all time. Set in the real-life frontier town of Deadwood, located in what would become the state of South Dakota, the show depicts a lawless period in American history when order was preserved by those willing and able to preserve it, which meant that violence was commonplace. Like on Yellowstone, some characters in Deadwood push back against corporate influence and governmental oversight, but unlike on Yellowstone, it’s ultimately a losing battle.
Deadwood paints a rich, complicated picture of the real old west, something that Yellowstone remembers with nostalgia.
- Release Date
-
2004 – 2006-00-00
- Network
-
HBO Max
- Showrunner
-
David Milch
- Writers
-
David Milch
Succession
The Roys would eat the Duttons alive
Yellowstone isn’t just its setting. The show is about a wealthy family whose members often jockey with themselves for position, which can’t help but remind me of another HBO show: Succession, which is basically Yellowstone if it were set in corporate board rooms, had less outright violence, and wasn’t as sentimental.
Rather than fighting over a ranging empire, the ultra-wealthy members of the Roy family fight over a media empire, and they’re generally more vicious than the Duttons. You get the idea that some of the Duttons occasionally experience feelings of familial warmth, but the Roy siblings are willing to do just about anything to get one over on each other, and patriarch Logan Roy is more uncompromising than John Dutton ever was.
That makes Succession sound bleak, and things do get serious, but it’s also got a wicked sense of humor. It’s another of the best HBO shows of all time, and worth watching whether or not you like Yellowstone.
- Release Date
-
2018 – 2023
- Network
-
HBO Max
- Showrunner
-
Jesse Armstrong
- Directors
-
Mark Mylod
- Writers
-
Jesse Armstrong
Godless
One of the best shows on Netflix
Back to traditional westerns, this excellent Netflix miniseries is about an outlaw who takes refuge with a ranching widow outside a small New Mexico town where most of the men died in a mining accident. Tensions escalate slowly until there’s a shootout between Frank Griffin’s violent gang and the women of La Belle.
Godless is beautifully directed, perfectly paced, and stays true to the classic western formula while still adding its own interesting twists. It emerges as part of a new class of great modern westerns, and it won’t take you too long to binge all seven episodes on Netflix.
- Release Date
-
2017 – 2017-00-00
- Network
-
Netflix
- Directors
-
Scott Frank
-
Sam Waterston
Marshall John Cook
-
-
Michelle Dockery
Alice Fletcher
-
Longmire
If Yellowstone were a procedural
Longmire is well-named; this show ran for six seasons, three on A&E and three on Netflix. It shares a lot of superficial similarities with Yellowstone. Both shows are set in the rural United States — Montana for Yellowstone and Wyoming for Longmire — both feature beautiful shots of the American landscape, and both are led by a self-sufficient western archetype who finds himself managing a clash between modernity and traditionalism (in the case of Longmire, our lead is Sheriff Walt Longmire, played by Robert Taylor). If you start up an episode of Longmire after marathoning Yellowstone, you might not immediately realize the switch.
That said, Longmire is more of a procedural detective show than Yellowstone, with Walt solving crimes and interacting with the tribal police on the nearby Indian reservation, another element that Longmire has in common with Yellowstone. It’s a solid series that’s consistently entertaining throughout all six seasons.
- Release Date
-
2012 – 2017
- Network
-
A&E, Netflix
- Showrunner
-
Hunt Baldwin
- Directors
-
J. Michael Muro, Christopher Chulack, Daniel Sackheim, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Michael Offer, Peter Weller, Alex Graves, David Boyd, James Hayman, Kari Skogland, Lodge Kerrigan
- Writers
-
John Coveny, Hunt Baldwin, Tony Tost, Sarah Nicole Jones
1883
Stick with what you know
There are lots of Yellowstone spin-off series out here, and some of them even outshine the original. Case in point: the miniseries 1883, which follows the ancestors of the modern-day Duttons as they leave Tennessee for Texas before going on an arduous wagon trail journey to Oregon, eventually deciding to settle in Montana. And the rest is TV history.
While Yellowstone pulled people in by casting Kevin Costner in the lead, 1883 features a whole roster of stars, including Sam Elliott, Tim McGraw, and Faith Hill. It’s grittier and more down-to-earth than Yellowstone, as these early Duttons haven’t yet amassed the enormous wealth the Yellowstone Duttons enjoy. It’s also generally more tightly written and overall realistic.
There are no plans to make a second season of 1883, which means it’s impossible to ruin its legacy. However, the story of the Dutton family did continue in the Yellowstone spin-off 1923, which is nearly as good. And a new spin-off called 1944 is on the way.
- Release Date
-
2021 – 2022-00-00
- Network
-
Paramount+
- Showrunner
-
Ron Burkle
-
-
-
Faith Hill
Margaret Dutton
-
Game of Thrones
Montana = Westeros
Game of Thrones is the biggest hit in the history of HBO, an eight-season fantasy epic where rival families fight bitterly for power and legacy. If you replace the medieval dress for cowboy garb and replace the dragons with horses, it’s not so far off from what happens on Yellowstone.
Both shows feature ruthless characters and a disregard for the law, with conflicts often settled outside the legal system. It’s a little easier to buy all of this on Game of Thrones than on Yellowstone, but both shows very much channel the same spirit.
- Release Date
-
2011 – 2019-00-00
-
-
Isaac Hempstead Wright
Brandon Bran Stark
-
Iain Glen
Sir Jorah Mormont
-
Peter Dinklage
Tyrion The Halfman Lannister
Go West(ern), young man
Although they’re not the draw they used to be, there are actually plenty of great modern westerns out there. Netflix’s American Primeval artfully delves into frontier violence, and the detective show Dark Winds is a fantastic procedural that follows tribal police detectives, zeroing in on the kinds of characters we would see occasionally on Yellowstone.
Maybe we’re being a bit harsh saying that all these shows do Yellowstone better than it does itself, but at the least, there are a lot of shows set in the same tonal universe that also deserve a look. It’s a big range out there.
