Just finished watching 1883, which is a prequel to Yellowstone. I plan to watch them in chronological order of dates. So next is 1923 and then Yellowstone after that.
At any rate, I was very impressed with this piece of work. It's a 10-part series about a group of people on the Oregon Trail going from Texas to...you guessed it...Oregon. The characters have to deal with a lot to get where they're going and constantly face battles of man vs man, man vs his environment, and man vs himself. Each episode is gripping and you really get sucked into the story.
It stars Sam Elliot and Tim McGraw, both of whom give very good performances. Of course Sam Elliot had to be in this since it's a Western. The guy is closing in on 80 now but he's still got the onscreen charisma he had in his younger days. It also has a beautiful and talented actress named Isabel May in a lead role who does a great job with her character.
So...because this is a series from Paramount, there is the usual propaganda. Indians...good. White man...bad. Add in some IR relationships and May's character who takes after her father instead of her mother which results in the woman becoming less feminine as the series goes on.
If you can handle all that, it's worth the watch as the series really is well done. Plus, these contemporary cliches sprout up organically due to the character's circumstances, so at least they don't seem forced. If this were the first series to show this kind of stuff, it might not raise too much of an eyebrow. But because we are assaulted with this stuff in most films and shows we watch these days, you can't help but roll your eyes. The writer/producer of this series and Yellowstone looks like a blue-collar, tough-as-nails guy himself. So I'm sure he was told to include some of this propaganda in his show, even though he may not have wanted to.
Even with these faults, I'd still give the show an 8/10 for the solid acting, attention to detail, and strong storyline.
