Everyone quotes Yellowstone, but Netflix’s best Western is a six-hour show nobody finished

There’s no question that Yellowstone (and all the shows that spun off from it) is the premiere TV western of the last 10 years. But that doesn’t mean it’s the best. In fact, there are quite a few western TV shows that beat Yellowstone at its own game. Chief among them is the modern classic Godless, one of the best miniseries to ever come out on Netflix.

Godless is the best western TV show of the 21st century

So far, anyway

All seven episodes of Godless dropped on Netflix in 2027. Set years after the end of the Civil War, it tells the story of Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell), a member of an outlaw gang led by Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels). Roy steals money from the gang and flees when he can no longer stomach Frank’s merciless tactics. Injured, he is nursed back to health by Alice Fletcher (Michelle Dockery), a widow living on the outskirts of the town of La Belle, New Mexico with her mother-in-law and teenaged son.

La Belle is also a focal point. The town is mostly populated by women, a mining accident having wiped out most of the male population two years prior. Mary Agnes McNue (Merritt Wever), the widow of the mayor, is the de facto leader of the town, while Bill McNue (Scoot McNairy) is still alive to serve as sheriff. Law & Order mainstay Sam Waterston makes a memorable appearance as a marshal from Santa Fe on the hunt for Frank.

You can probably guess where this goes. Although not all of them realize what they’re doing, the women of La Belle are essentially harboring Roy Goode under their roof. Meanwhile, Frank is looking for his wayward surrogate son with murder on his mind. The show leads up to a confrontation in the final episode, and it’s every bit as tense and brutal as you’d imagine.

Godless comes to life in the details

It’s a classic western that’s also a subversion of classic westerns

Godless has all the features of a classic western: a heartless outlaw, a town under siege, and everything happening far from the stabilizing touch of civilization. What elevates the show is simply that writer-director Scott Frank does everything really, really well. He did copious amounts of research before even beginning to write, looking into the history of mining disasters, living conditions in the nineteenth century, and the role of women in the old west. All that work comes across onscreen.

The cast takes it the rest of the way there. Unsurprisingly, Jeff Daniels stands out as Frank Griffin, a hardened outlaw who has convinced himself he’s following some kind of divine plan. At one point, he’s willing to tend to people with smallpox, unafraid of getting sick himself because he already knows exactly how he will die. Frank feels at once very similar to other villains from classic westerns like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, and yet like no one else we’ve ever seen onscreen.

O’Connell and Dockery are excellent as Alice and Roy, the de facto leads of the series, but some of the supporting players almost steal the show. Merritt Wever stands out as Mary Agnes, who finds herself in possession of real authority at a time and place where women usually didn’t have it, and finds that she’s very good at using it. Thomas Brodie-Sangster has a winning role as Whitey Winn, a deputy who looks far too young to be living this kind of difficult life. When push comes to shove, Whitey is as tough as any of them, but he also takes violin lessons on the side.

Godless is full of these kinds of little details. It feels lived in and alive in a way that a lot of TV shows don’t.

Godless vs Yellowstone

Western apples vs western oranges

At just seven episodes, Godless doesn’t overstay its welcome. It really does feel like one long movie played out across several installments, but you can watch it as slow or fast as you please.

The show is so different from Yellowstone that it’s almost not worth comparing the two, and yet, they nominally occupy the same genre, so it’s fair game. While Godless says what it wants to say with economy and grace, Yellowstone sprawls out across five seasons, some of them better than others. Yellowstone is more melodramatic than Godless, especially towards the end, when the plot starts to contort in ways that get harder and harder to believe. Yellowstone’s influence on the modern westerns (and on TV in general) cannot be gainsaid, but front to back, Godless is the higher-quality show.

Go west

In the classic era of westerns, in the 1940s and 50s, the American frontier was often depicted as an exciting, almost idyllic place. Godless is one of many shows and movies that reimagine it as bleaker and harder. If you like that style, you don’t have to go far to find more shows like it. The Netflix show American Primeval is just a couple of clicks away.