Taylor Sheridan’s heavy-hitting new drama Landman deserves to leapfrog its way to the very front of the queue. (Sorry, other shows.) Because this epic story, set on and around the oilfields of west Texas, is like nothing else out there. Here’s why you should tune in.
It will fill the Yellowstone-sized hole in your life
We all love Yellowstone and its ranch-flavoured look at the dramas of rural Montana. But with the finale approaching (and while we wait for sequel The Madison), we’ll have to look elsewhere for high-stakes neo-Western TV. Thankfully, because series creator Taylor Sheridan seems literally incapable of taking a holiday, we have plenty of options. And although Landman swaps the Montana mountains for the arid west Texas oilfields, its combination of complex characters and relationships, big business machinations and the toils of life on the land seems set to scratch that Yellowstone itch.
Billy Bob Thornton
There’s just something about Billy Bob Thornton – the cool stare, the salt-and-pepper stubble, the sexy, menacing smirk. You can’t quite figure out what his intentions are, and you can never tell whether he’s playing a scumbag with a heart of gold or a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Which makes him perfect for the role of Tommy Norris, a crisis executive at an oil company that has no shortage of crises. In the petroleum industry, a landman is in charge of securing the land required for oil exploration – and managing it once that land is secured. And, as we learn, getting it is the easy part; keeping it is the challenge. Real Billy Bobheads know that Thornton once played Howard Doyle, fictional heir to the Doyle oil fortune in the Coen brothers’ Intolerable Cruelty, but his return to the oil character game blows that role out of the water.
A stacked supporting cast
Demi Moore, the ’90s icon currently having a moment, and Jon Hamm, star of Mad Men – one of the most influential shows of TV’s golden age – are just two of the top-tier performers that round out Landman’s supporting cast. They play the Millers, the husband-and-wife team behind one of Texas’s largest oil companies. And whether they’re chewing the fat with Tommy Norris or we’re seeing their life together at home, you won’t want them to leave the screen. Other actors, like Andy Garcia (Ocean’s Eleven, The Expendables) and the always-excellent Michael Peña (Crash, Narcos), are more proof that the cast bench is as deep as it is wide.
It meets the cowboy moment
If 2024 could talk, it would have a Texan drawl. Beyoncé became the first Black artist to top Billboard’s country charts with Cowboy Carter, Post Malone played the Grand Ole Opry and dueted with Morgan Wallen and, together, Beyoncé and Post Malone sang a very country song about Levi’s jeans. And let’s be real: Shaboozey’s A Bar Song (Tipsy) is the fiddle-heavy hoedown soundtrack of the year. All this is to say that pop culture right now has a distinctly country twang to it, so why not get into the spirit and go full-on Texas immersion by getting Landman locked and loaded for a watch?
The land, man
Landman is based on a podcast, Boomtown, which is excellent in its own right. The thing about podcasts is they’re audio-only. Landman doesn’t just tell, it shows – bringing us into the vastness, and dustiness, of the Texas oilfields. It’s harsh country, but it’s also beautiful. It’s a part of the world you may not have seen before but, as the oil-producing heartland of the country that produces the most oil in the world, west Texas is a region of significant political and economic importance. Watch Landman, and you’ll see exactly what everyone’s fighting over.
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Paramount+. Landman is now streaming exclusively on Paramount+.