How Taylor Sheridan's Yellowstone Revitalized the Western

Taylor Sheridan has been the unquestioned king of streaming television of the last decade, and it all started with Yellowstone. The Montana-set neo-Western paired modern intrigue and soap-opera drama with sweeping Western vistas and Kevin Costner at its center.

Sheridan’s writing kept millions invested in the Dutton family over the course of five epic seasons—or, four and a half epic seasons and a rushed finale, depending on who you ask. Other 2010s attempts to recapture the West — from Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight to Antoine Fuqua’s remake of The Magnificent Seven and Gore Verbinski’s Rango — failed to revitalize the genre in the same way.

Yellowstone did so by shifting the action into the present: corporate sabotage, boardroom schemes, high-dollar nightlife and smartphone warfare sit alongside horseback chases and ranch conflicts.

United States, Montana

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