Yellowstone fans had to endure quite a long wait before the arrival of the second half of the fifth season, a delay that was exacerbated thanks to a spat between creator Taylor Sheridan and star Kevin Costner. And now that the new episodes are here, unfortunately, they’ve proven to be quite a dud among many devotees of Paramount’s hit Western.
Yellowstone‘s fanbase has by and large eviscerated Part 2 of Season 5 online, giving it a series-low Rotten Tomatoes score of just 40%. The complaints have zeroed in on everything from the season’s uneven pacing to disappointing filler episodes, a reduced presence and then the abrupt departure of Costner, and a shift in focus from the dynamics of the central ranching family in favor of more political drama. “This is awful. Just awful,” reads a one-star Rotten Tomatoes review that appeared on Monday.
“Like Game of Thrones, they have built this amazing world, with great characters, and captivating drama, and then seemingly allowed it to develop through stream of consciousness until it is unresolvable. Where is the planning and the carefully crafted exit?”
If that’s how you, too, are feeling about Paramount’s blockbuster drama, here are three TV shows to check out for much more satisfying family clashes and similar empire-building.
Outer Range (Prime Video)
This first series, which Prime Video shamefully cancelled after two seasons, is basically Yellowstone meets the supernatural.
Starring Josh Brolin as a Wyoming rancher named Royal Abbott (who you can think of as an analog to Costner’s John Dutton in Yellowstone), Prime’s show blends mind-bending sci-fi and Western drama, as Abbott uncovers a strange and mysterious void on his land.
Both TV shows deal with stories about power struggles and family loyalty. Outer Range, however, adds existential mystery and the metaphysical to the stakes of its story, making it much more interesting (in my opinion) than the real-world family and political conflicts you get from Yellowstone.
La Maison (Apple TV+)
This next TV is sort of like what you’d get if you combined the dysfunction of families like the Duttons of Yellowstone with the Roys of Succession, and you then placed all that against the backdrop of Paris’ fashion scene.
The conflict in this superb French drama (from the same production company behind Le Bureau des légendes, one of the greatest spy dramas of all time) involves a corporate power struggle over the future of a high-end fashion house. Its visionary leader commits a sin that gets him cancelled, which puts ownership of his Chanel-like haute couture house up for grabs. Check out my interview with the show’s main cast here.
While the setting of La Maison couldn’t be more different from the expansive countryside of Yellowstone, both sides concern themselves with the demands of legacy.
Ozark (Netflix)
Finally, we come to a hit Netflix drama with a comparison to Yellowstone that’s maybe a little less obvious. Both shows, however, apart from being set in rural areas of the US, tell stories that grapple with the dark side of family dynamics.
Both shows feature patriarchs navigating their families through the impact of internal and external forces. In Ozark, Jason Bateman plays Marty Byrde, a highly intelligent financial planner who becomes deeply involved in the world of crime and a drug cartel. His journey to the dark side is one of those arcs wherein the flawed protagonist is doing whatever he can to protect his family, a compromise that I’m sure John Dutton would easily understand.
