5 series for your Yellowstone drought

Throughout writer-creator Taylor Sheridan’s epic saga of ranchers vs land developers, patriarch John Dutton (Kevin Costner) has led his family’s battle against the powerful consortiums who’re snapping up land in Montana’s Paradise Valley – from farms, to nature reserves and Native American reservations – in the name of building a new city for the super-rich. 

We’re back in the saddle, but time has run out for John, who was sworn in as the new governor of Montana at the start of Yellowstone Season 5. In retaliation for his efforts to pull the rug out from under Market Equities and their development projects that threaten Paradise Valley, Market Equities’ heavy hitter Sarah Atwood (Dawn Olivieri) has hired a hitman to stage John’s suicide. And if that doesn’t destroy everything the Duttons hold dear, the tax man will – with a massive inheritance tax bill against the estate. 

Alas, time has run out for the Duttons in other ways, too. These six episodes wrap up the main Yellowstone series. While spinoff series The Madison – starring Michelle Pfeiffer, Patrick J Adams and Matthew Fox – is already in production and a second season of 1923 is set to launch in the US this February 2025 (no news on proposed spinoffs 6666 and 1944 yet), it’s going to be a bit of a wait until we’re back in Dutton territory. 

Watch the trailer for Yellowstone S5B

So as we bow our heads in mourning for John Dutton, we’ll be opening one eye for a sneaky little glance to find out what we’re going to watch next … after we’ve finished our full-series rewatch, of course.

Binge Yellowstone Season 1-5

1. 1923

Taylor Sheridan takes us back to Paradise Valley in 1923, during the Great Depression, Prohibition era. It’s a difficult time for Dutton patriarch Jacob (Harrison Ford) and his wife Cara (Helen Mirren, Anna), and in a familiar political scheme, Jacob sets out to stack the odds in the Duttons’ favour by becoming livestock commissioner.

While Jacob’s nephew John Snr (James Badge Dale) helps him to run Yellowstone, John’s brother Spencer (Brandon Sklenar), a World War I veteran, escapes to seek his fortune as a big game hunter in Kenya – then a hotbed of European colonial decadence. While you couldn’t get further from the horror of Europe’s trenches than the wide plains and skies of Africa, there’s a death wish at the heart of Spencer’s choice to hunt the hyenas, leopards and lions who’ve turned man-eater (partly inspired by Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson’s account of the real-life man-eating lions of Tsavo). Fans of Yellowstone’s Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes) might find more than one parallel between Spencer and Kayce’s post-war struggles. 

Viewers collecting Dutton lore will also spot that Spencer carries Elsa Dutton’s Comanche knife, and we’ll also get more of Thomas Rainwater’s (Gil Binmingham) backstory, through the tale of what his grandmother Teonna (Aminah Nieves) went through at one the notorious Indian residential schools.

2. Special Ops: Lioness

Taylor Sheridan teamed up with series co-producer Nicole Kidman to create this action drama series inspired by the real-life Marine Corps’ Lioness Task Force and FETs (Female Engagement Teams). While it’s a far cry from Yellowstone life, there are common threads in that each generation of Duttons has experienced military service, and a conflict of loyalties when they’ve bonded with outsiders only to have to betray them in the name of the “greater good”. 

Senior CIA operative Kaitlyn Meade (Kidman) heads up the Lioness programme, which assigns female operatives to go undercover on missions in the United States “War on Terror”. 

Kaitlyn’s Head of Operations, Joe (Zoe Saldaña), recruits and trains women like Marine Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira) to infiltrate global terrorist organisations like ISIS and eliminate key targets. They’ll operate in areas where, as women, their presence will be dismissed as irrelevant, and blend in with the crowd thanks to laws dictating that women fully cover their faces and bodies. 

Lioness operatives risk torture and execution if they’re compromised before Joe’s Quick Response Team (QRT) can extract them, but like the Duttons, they’re putting their lives on the line for the higher purpose of fighting outrageous, destructive greed. And as a determined woman surrounded by powerful, deadly men with secrets to keep (and a few bar brawls to hush up), Kaitlyn Meade might see eye to eye with Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly). 

3. Lawmen: Bass Reeves

Taylor Sheridan is one of the executive producers on this drama anthology series about the most legendary lawman in the American Old West. The first season brings us Bass Reeves (David Oyelowo), the enslaved and freed man who became the first Black US Marshal west of the Mississippi and went on to put more than 3 000 outlaws in chains. 

The series, based on series consultant Sidney Thompson’s award-winning trilogy of historical novels about Bass Reeves (which itself drew on the painstaking and brilliant research of African-American historian Art T Burton) is a passion project for British actor David Oyelowo (Five Days). Along with playing Bass Reeves himself, he worked for eight years to get the project made. David finally got his foot in the door when he started talking to Taylor, who agreed to come onboard as co-executive producer, along with showrunner-creator Chad Feehan (Banshee).

If you’re in love with Yellowstone’s wide open spaces, lyrical shots of men and horses, quick-on-the-trigger frontier justice, discussions of the gritty hardships of farming, and lone heroes who follow a righteous personal code, it’s a must-watch. 

4. Billy the Kid Season 2

This Western mini-series is the tale of how a child of Irish immigrant pioneers became one of the most notorious Old West outlaws before his death at the age of 21. Billy the Kid’s (Tom Blythe) saga includes the classic trek from the city to the frontier, a family who fights for their land and (unlike the Duttons) loses, and a killing that sends Billy on the run as a lone outlaw on the lookout for a gang to join. 

For Wild West gangs, the American frontier is an invitation to do as they please, guns blazing, until they trip into an open grave. But they’re not the only villains on the range. Season 2 focuses on the bigger fish in the game through the machinations of the Santa Fe Ring, as the series reveals how political corruption, land rights disputes, greed and conflicts of interest spark the Lincoln County War. It’s familiar territory for Yellowstone fans, as Billy the Kid’s parallel stories about ranchers and the cattle wars flesh out the Duttons’ tales even more. 

5. Westworld Season 1-4

If the Duttons have shown us anything, it’s that real life in the Wild West demanded women who could do anything, from leading a wagon train, to killing to eat or survive. But in the Delos Destinations corporation’s Wild West theme park of the future, the park’s android characters (called hosts) are there to fulfil big city visitors’ simplistic (and sometimes sadistic) notions about frontier life, ranchers, saloon girls, cowboys, outlaws and lawmen. It’s an entertainment centre where the male hosts let you win the fight, and the female hosts fulfil your more sexual fantasies. 

All the hosts follow their code and the storylines laid down by Westworld’s co-founder, creative director, chief programmer, and chairman of the board – Dr Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins) – and fine-tuned by Head of Programming Bernard Lowe (Jeffrey Wright) and Head of Narrative Lee Siemore (Simon Quarterman). 

But when a code update unlocks consciousness for several hosts, including good girl rancher’s daughter Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) and bad girl madam Maeve Millay (Thandiwe Newton), some guests are in for a nasty surprise. And they’re just the first people in the way as the hosts lead the charge against their oppressors. Horses? Check! Cowboys? Check. Frontier adventures? Saddle up and ride!

Binge Yellowstone Season 1-5