Waiting for the next season of Yellowstone making you antsy? Here are a few western shows to help pass the time until those elusive final episodes come around.
We get it; Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone is an addicting show. But rather than rewatch it for the umpteenth time, why not expand your horizons a bit? Of course, there's much more to take in from the Yellowstone universe with 1883 and 1923, but one can also branch out to other shows different outlaw-and-hero dynamics. No matter what, the eight shows we have in mind will keep your imagination busy until the final episodes of Season 5 of Yellowstone are finally streaming on our TVs.
1923
This latest installment of the Dutton family origin story focuses on a new generation of Duttons led by patriarch Jacob (Harrison Ford) and matriarch Cara (Helen Mirren), and explores a fateful early 20th-century period when pandemics, historic drought, post-World War I traumas, the end of Prohibition, and the start of the Great Depression all drastically affect life in the Mountain West. In addition to Ford and Mirren, the cast includes Darren Mann (Animal Kingdom), Michelle Randolph (A Snow White Christmas), James Badge Dale (Hightown), Marley Shelton (Scream), Brian Geraghty (Big Sky), Aminah Nieves (Blueberry), and Jerome Flynn (Game of Thrones).
Streaming: Paramount+
1883
Every journey has its perils. Every legacy has its cost.
The official tagline for Yellowstone's first prequel, 1883, says it best. The spinoff series from Yellowstone co-creator Taylor Sheridan, which focuses on the ancestors of Dutton Ranch paterfamilias John Dutton (Kevin Costner), “follows the Dutton family as they embark on a journey west through the Great Plains toward the last bastion of untamed America. It is a stark retelling of Western expansion, and an intense study of one family fleeing poverty to seek a better future in America's promised land — Montana.”
Country stars Tim McGraw and Faith Hill, C&I reader favorite Sam Elliott, LaMonica Garrett (Designated Survivor), and Isabel May (Alexa & Katie) are among the major players in a lavishly produced, epic drama.
Streaming: Paramount+
Longmire
Based on Craig Johnson's western-mystery Longmire novels, this series follows seasoned sheriff Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor) — a taciturn professional who relies on his well-honed instincts — and trusted allies like longtime best friend Henry Standing Bear (Lou Diamond Phillips) and transplanted-from-Philadelphia deputy Victoria “Vic” Moretti (Katee Sackhoff) as they uncover dark secrets and investigating violent crimes in the fictional Absaroka County of contemporary Wyoming.
Streaming: Netflix
Deadwood
The critically acclaimed HBO series is all about life, death, and the often-contentious process of community-building in the titular South Dakota mining town during the 1870s. The series stars Timothy Olyphant (who went on to arguably greater success with Justified), Ian McShane (Starz series American Gods), John Hawkes (Winter’s Bone, the forthcoming Small Town Crime), Molly Parker (Dexter, House of Cards), and Titus Welliver (Amazon Prime’s Bosch), among others.
Streaming: MAX
Justified
From the very start — to be precise, the first scene of the first episode — Justified promises to be a different sort of primetime crime drama. Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens — smooth as silk, bold as brass — strolls onto the swimming pool deck of a swanky Miami hotel, takes his seat opposite a cocky mobster, and reminds the miscreant of a warning he issued the previous day: “You don’t get out of town in 24 hours, I’m gonna shoot you on sight.” The mobster proceeds to make two serious mistakes. First, he brushes aside Raylan’s threat. Then he tries to pull a gun. Raylan responds by shooting — once, twice, three times — leaving the mobster very seriously dead.
Even if Raylan hadn’t been wearing a cowboy hat and Lucchese boots — and even if audiences hadn’t already seen Timothy Olyphant, the actor perfectly cast as the deputy marshal, play a similarly lethal character in HBO’s Deadwood — the scene would have crackled with the potent intensity of a Wild West showdown. And that’s exactly what the series producers intended, to alert viewers right from the get-go that Justified was going to be a contemporary spin on the classic western, with a straight-shooting, wisecracking lawman as the steely-eyed hero of the FX network show (which returned for a second event series last year).
Streaming: Hulu
Outer Range
In Prime Video’s “trippy western thriller” series, Josh Brolin heads the cast as Royal Abbott, a rancher who discovers, while fighting for his land and family, an unfathomable mystery at the edge of Wyoming’s wilderness. He’s at a loss to explain or understand recent events that bespeak supernatural influences, and is requesting — well, OK, more like demanding — some kind of sign from the Lord. But you should be careful what you wish for.
Streaming: Prime Video
Godless
Godless offered something Michelle Dockery had never done — a classic-style, shoot ’em up American western. The 1880s-set series weaves together the narratives of several contingents. There’s the struggling mining town of La Belle, New Mexico, almost totally populated by hardened widows who’ve lost their husbands in a mine accident. A group of investors wants to get its hands on that mine. Evil gang leader Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels) also has La Belle in his sights because one of his former associates is reported to be hiding out there.
Where does Dockery’s character, Alice Fletcher, play into all of it? Fletcher is a widow, as well, but she’s an outcast who’s not trusted by the ladies of La Belle. She resides with her young son and mother-in-law on a horse farm outside of town. She’s also the one harboring the man Frank Griffin wants to find. As expected in any great western, all the narratives eventually collide in one violent showdown.
Streaming: Netflix
Hell on Wheels
The show's name is Hell on Wheels — and the title isn’t merely metaphorical.
To be sure, the western TV series — which premiered on the AMC cable network — involves a relentless avenger who’s hell-bent on smiting the wicked. And just in case we miss the religious symbolism, the opening episode begins with the relentless protagonist — Cullen Bohannon (played by Anson Mount), a Confederate Army veteran hunting the Union soldiers responsible for his wife’s wartime death — gunning down one of the guilty parties in a church confessional.
Streaming: Prime Video
Still missing Yellowstone? Check out C&I's Yellowstone guide.
