Landman: Yellowstone in Dallas mode, it's really merciless (review)

The insatiable Taylor Sheridan arrives with a new series in the land of oil. An incredibly beautiful soap, boosted by colorful dialogues, with very assertive conservative accents.

And to think that it's not even a spin-off of Yellowstone ! The hyper prolific Taylor Sheridan arrives on Paramount + with Landmana brand new series, its seventh creation for the studio since 2018 (!). At least as productive as Ryan Murphy, the filmmaker still wrote all the episodes, produced all the episodes and even directed (magnificently) the first two. And the worst part is that it’s good! Really good!

After Tulsa King, Mayor of Kingstown Or LionessSheridan returns to the genre that made his legend: the Midwest soap! Abandoning the ranches of the north, he moved his camera south of the Rockies, into the desert landscapes of West Texas. More precisely, we are in the “Permian Basin” where oil and natural gas deposits flourish. A sort of wild west far from big cities, almost from civilization. The wells and refineries are running at full capacity and supply huge tank trucks full of black gold every day. A business generating billions of dollars that Tommy Norris knows by heart. He is the one who manages the farms of a wealthy independent owner. He takes care of the men responsible for the dangerous extraction work, conflicts with the authorities, keeping the Mexican cartels at dock… Needless to say, Tommy is stressed. Especially since his private life is not simple either!

Taylor Sheridan thus tells in detail the life of oil, as he told that of the ranchers. And as for Yellowstonehe designed a gallery of fantastic characters to embody this business with dirty hands. Billy Bob Thornton is exceptional as a site manager. A true “fixer” of black gold, his Tommy carries his charisma and his stetson from one crisis to the next, with insane phlegm. It must be said that Sheridan wrote some very delicate dialogues for him. Every Tommy Norris line cracks through the air like a whiplash. There are no discussions in Landman. All the scenes are thought of as verbal jousts between foul-mouthed cowboys on the verge of a nervous breakdown. This is obviously too much. Sometimes a little tiring. But so enjoyable.

The screenwriter dusts off the good old Dallas of granny by injecting a touch of nothing to give a damn at times surreal. Landman is dripping with testosterone in every place and it takes quite a bit of perspective to look at it all with fascination and amusement. Especially since the series seems to delight in barely veiled misogyny. Tommy and the women, it's quite a poem… Totally out of step with his times, in direct opposition to Gen-Z, the devious old adventurer claims his share of machismo. Fortunately the female cast – Ali Larter, Michelle Randolph, Kayla Wallace Or Demi Moore – is strong enough to answer him.

But deep down, despite its totally assumed soap side, Landman is a totally masculine series and embraces itself as such. Sheridan has written an unfiltered, resolutely conservative drama that will speak especially to Republican voters – much more than Yellowstone. In Landmaneveryone hates federal laws, drives trucks (read Ford pickups), smokes cigarettes, drinks beer and eats big steaks. This is America's “Red State”, pure and simple, where we only listen to country music on the radio. An America bloated with oil, which refuses to stop digging and which doesn't care about the rest of the planet which blames it. In a mind-blowing diatribe scene, stopping in front of a field of wind turbines, Billy Bob Thornton (Tommy) explains to us that the energies “alternatives, not clean“, it's rubbish, that oil is life and that we haven't yet found anything better to replace it. He also forgets to mention in passing that this “Permian Basin” (west of the Texas) is the largest producer of greenhouse gases in the world…

Landman, season 1 in 10 episodes, to watch on Paramount + and also in France on Canal +; from November 18, 2024.