Western TV Shows Like ‘1923’ and ‘Yellowstone’

The HBO series from creator Daniel Knauf only ran for two seasons. But set around a mysterious travelling carnival during the Great Depression, Carnivale set up an epic battle of good vs. evil. At the center of that proxy war between Heaven and Hell over 24 episodes was an Oklahoma teenage farm boy, Ben Hawkins (played by Nick Stahl), and a charismatic preacher, Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown).  

The historical western miniseries from History centered on an infamous family blood feud that ran for decades. Kevin Costner as Devil Anse Hatfield and Bill Paxton as Randall McCoy turned in memorable performances in the revenge drama inspired by the real-life battle between the Hatfield and McCoy families, of West Virginia and Kentucky, respectively. No one quite knew why the family war started, but it sure became bloody and legend after the U.S. Civil War ended.

This Yellowstone origin story from Taylor Sheridan follows the Dutton family as they journey through the Great Plains toward the last bastion of frontier America. Leaving poverty behind, the 1883 Duttons follow a 19th-century wagon trail across the prairies to find riches on a Montana homestead in a last bastion of untamed America. The macho yet heart-wrenching family drama that comes up against issues of gun-slinging frontier justice stars Sam Elliott, Faith Hill, Tim McGraw and Isabel May, and is written and directed by Sheridan.

This Western saga leaves the ranch for Texas oil fields. The Taylor Sheridan drama stars Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy Norris, the titular landman of the series. He’s a fixer who keeps things running and acts as an intermediary between the field workers and the money men in the oil industry. Ever the huckster, Norris ably rides the boom and bust cycles of the oil business. Landman, also starring Demi Moore, Jon Hamm, Ali Larter and Michelle Randolph, is chockfull of Western themes like rugged individualism, blind ambition and everyman struggles set against ongoing debates over oil, climate change and economic growth.

Longmire looks like a Western, with a Wyoming county sheriff Walt Longmire (played by Robert Taylor),  who was recently widowed and keeps order in a barren landscape. But it’s also a procedural in that there’s lots of crimes to solve. The drama was canceled by A&E after three seasons before being revived on Netflix. The series also stars Katee Sackhoff, Lou Diamond Phillips, Bailey Chase, Cassidy Freeman and Adam Bartley.

Launched on HBO in 2004, Deadwood is full-on Western. The series is set in a mining camp in South Dakota in 1876. Timothy Olyphant plays a sharpshooting, no-nonsense Montana marshal and Ian McShane is the bullying, ruthless, sadistic owner of the town’s saloon, brothel and hotel. Needless to say, keeping the peace in this frontier outpost is no easy feat.

The popular crime drama from Taylor Sheridan and Hugh Dillon has Jeremy Renner playing Mike McKlusky, the unofficial mayor and head of a power-broking family in Kingstown, Michigan, a city underpinned by business from nine penitentiaries. Mayor of Kingstown is headed to a fourth season on Paramount+ after the third season had the Russian mob setting up shop in the Michigan city , and a drug war erupting inside and outside prison walls. Of course, McLusky — played by Renner, returning after his near-fatal snowmobile accident in real life — has to keep the peace, both in the city and his infighting family.

Taylor Sheridan’s Tulsa King replaces the ranch with modern Oklahoma where Sylvester Stallone goes West as a crime boss, Dwight “The General” Manfredi, who’s released from prison after serving 25 years for refusing to flip on the local godfather. Now exiled from New York City, Manfredi’s efforts to build a new organized crime syndicate in disorganized Tulsa are complicated by his old mob family showing little gratitude and having to get up to speed on the ways of a modern world, including cell phones, credit cards and legal weed dispensaries.

Netflix’s 2016 limited series from Scott Frank and Steven Soderbergh breathed new life into the Western. Jeff Daniels is Frank Griffin, a menacing outlaw with a terrible upbringing and who terrorizes the West. He’s hunting gunslinger Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell), his son-like partner who becomes a mortal enemy. He’s been hiding in the home of Alice Fletcher, played by Michelle Dockery of Downton Abbey fame, in an isolated mining town run by women. Also starring in this feminist Western are Merritt Wever and Sam Waterston.

Brothers Tony and Joe Gayton chose the backdrop of the building of the country’s first transcontinental  railroad during the Reconstruction era to explore themes of freedom and race. The revenge drama stars Anson Mount as an ex-Confederate soldier hunting the Union soldier who killed his wife. Set in a traveling tent city dubbed Hell on Wheels while the railroad is built, the series shows how the Civil War may have ended, but U.S. southern slaves are not yet free. The theme of what freedom means dominates the AMC series.