Most TV writers would love to be Taylor Sheridan. Some might profess not to be fans – they might even be snobby about his work, claiming it to be vulgar and too popular with American conservatives – but plenty crave the status he now enjoys: he is more famous than his shows. What’s Landman? It’s the new Taylor Sheridan.
And it is very Taylor Sheridan. His dramas tend to centre on hard but wise men, tersely but sagely dealing with problems where violence and death are not far away. In Sheridan’s breakthrough, Yellowstone, Kevin Costner is a Montana rancher fighting to preserve old traditions that cause him endless strife, which he nobly bears. In Mayor of Kingstown, Jeremy Renner is a fixer playing all sides in a Michigan prison town to prevent full-scale war between the criminal gangs, cops and prisoners. In the relatively happy-go-lucky Tulsa King, Sylvester Stallone’s New York mobster introduces naive Oklahomans to the bitter realities of organised crime.
