Never hesitate.
Dutton Ranch
The first two (of nine) episodes debut Friday, May 15, exclusively on Paramount Plus. Subsequent episodes debut every Friday. I've seen the first four episodes.
Taylor Sheridan's Yellowstone concluded on the Paramount Network cable channel with its fifth season in December 2024, tying up the primary threads of the extremely popular show in a manner that felt a bit rushed. It was still mostly satisfying for a modern Western set in Montana, featuring the legendary Dutton family, which has faced all manner of tragic calamities while dealing with repeated efforts to oust them from their seat of power and wealth in the state.
It left open further possibilities for some of the leading characters, however, and the first sequel debuted two months ago on broadcast network CBS. Led by Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes), the show follows him as he deals with the death of his wife by accepting an offer to join his former U.S. Navy SEAL teammate (Logan-Marshall Green) and a new team of comrades as they chase criminals across the state, while still dealing with ramifactions from the Dutton family's excesses. It's a meat-and-potatoes show, in that it feels like a CBS procedural, with different criminals to chase, capture or protect in each episode -- with some multi-episode arcs -- but it's entertaining for what it is, hemmed in a bit by its broadcast-network limitations.
Debuting on streaming service Paramount Plus, Dutton Ranch does not face such limitations, chiefly manifested throughout its first four episodes by its more frequent use of the f-word. The show benefits over Marshals because it features two of the Yellowstone stars reprising their roles -- Kelly Reilly as Beth Dutton and Cole Hauser as her partner Rip Wheeler, plus a key third character, their son Carter (Finn Little) -- and also retains more of the original show's moral ambiguity.
Created by Chad Freehan, who served as showrunner on Lawmen: Bass Reeves, another rip-roaring Taylor Sherican series creation, Dutton Ranch also benefits by having Christina Alexandra Voros serve as both director of photography and director for the first two episodes; she previously helmed 12 episodes of Yellowstone, as well as episodes of Lawmen: Bass Reeves, 1883, and all six episodes of this year's The Madison, which looks absolutely gorgeous. (Greg Yaitanes, who has a wealth of experience and also directed two episodes of Marshals, helms Episodes 3 and 4.)
Under her eye, Dutton Ranch is a visual marvel for its setting. The first episode begins with Beth, Rip and their son Carter (Finn Little, also a Yellowstone vet, now 19 years old) happily enjoying their new life on a small portion of the Yellowstone Ranch acreage before it all goes up in smoke. Forced to relocate elsewhere, they buy a small family ranch in South Texas -- the fictional Rio Paloma, though the show's primary location is Ferris, Texas, just 20 miles south of downtown Dallas, where the landscapes are wide open, with low-elevation, gently rolling hills.
Renaming it Dutton Ranch, they are small players in the area, but have the advantage, starting out, of having 150 cattle producing high-quality Angus beef. The first couple of episodes set up their new friends, including Ed Harris as Everett McKinney, a Navy vet who is now a vetrinarian; reliable ranch worker Azul (J. R. Villarreal), a carry-over from the previous owner; and recently paroled ranch worker Zachariah (Marc Manchaca), who is hired by Rip using the same method he used on Yellowstone. A wild card is introduced when Carter rescues a young woman under attack one night, Oreana (Natalie Alyn Lind).
The big ranch in the area is owned by Beaulah Jackson, portrayed by Annette Bening with a surprising degree of implied menace to accompany her expected command of the ranch. Jai Courtenay also appears as Beaulah's oldest son Rob-Will, who is all menace as a threatening, drunken lout. Juan Pablo Raba is a different sort of antagonist, the younger Jackson son who pays obeisance to his mother and must handle his brother; he's more slick than tough.
The show motors through the first four episodes with a propulsive energy that pulls the various narrative threads together with clever style. The new characters who are introduced are variations on the sort of characters who appeared in the past on Yellowstone, yet are given South Texan twists that make them distinctively different.
Having Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser continue their roles gives Dutton Ranch a very solid foundation to build upon. Their combustible chemistry makes any moment when they're walking together seductively troubling, because longtime Yellowstone fans are fully aware that they are entirely unpredictable and capable of doing anything to protect the ones they love.
Now Streaming celebrates independent and international genre films and television shows that are newly available on legal streaming services.