Sad news: Danny Huston, star of the hit Yellowstone series, has passed away

Who would have thought, in June 2018 when Yellowstone first premiered on the Paramount Network, that Taylor Sheridan would become one of television’s most prolific producers? He had previously garnered acclaim in the film world with Wind River and Sicario, but no one was prepared for how massive a phenomenon the show would become. Soon, it seemed everyone was tuning in to witness the Dutton family’s struggle to hold on to Yellowstone Ranch. Nearly a decade later, the Sheridan universe has become something like the Star Trek of the modern Western with countless spin-offs. Now we welcome Dutton Ranch which follows Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Rip (Cole Hauser) into the fold.

Yellowstone formed Sheridan’s storytelling blueprint. A gruff, no-nonsense protagonist would become a staple of his series (Kevin Costner started it all), and it became clear he makes television with red states in mind. One could connect the dots between Sheridan’s rising popularity with the overall shifting of the American political landscape, but the politics of the series aren’t always that clear-cut. Before its conclusion last year, Yellowstone was one of the most visible platforms for Indigenous actors, like Gil Birmingham and Mo Brings Plenty, and one of the few shows actually curious about Indigenous land sovereignty. (In fact, this became the entire foundation of the Yellowstone origin story, the series 1883.) Sheridan has written numerous queer female characters, but just as many scenes making fun of pronouns. He seems to be interested in powerful women, yet he often sexualizes them. It can be something of a mixed bag, and not easy to pin down, but that’s part of the appeal, too.

But even when it falters, Yellowstone is an extremely watchable family drama. It also is, respectfully, a batshit series. There are huge soapy betrayals—a son finds out his father is not actually his father and that’s why he never felt his love, for example—and over-the-top scripts, especially as performed by Reilly. (“I hope you die of ass cancer!”) No wonder it was able to attract 13.6 million viewers in its final season.

Yellowstone added up to such a massive success for Paramount+ that the network gave Sheridan a blank check. Suddenly, he was producing as many shows as Ryan Murphy: one about oil fields instead of cows and ranches, another that’s essentially just a Sylvester Stallone showcase, and even one about women in the CIA. These days, there is a new Yellowstone spin-off for every season of the year (with more on the way): Some explore the Dutton family’s origins, and others that are pushing the universe forward, like Marshals, the CBS police procedural that follows Kayce (Luke Grimes) after the events of Yellowstone‘s finale. But how many of his shows are actually good? And which ones will survive the tug-of-war as he departs Paramount for NBCUniversal, which recently poached him for $1 billion? We dove deep into the Sheridan back catalog, watching everything from Mayor of Kingstown to 1923 to rank every single one of his shows. Read on for our list.

10. Tulsa King

Tulsa King is the weakest of Sheridan’s offerings, perhaps because he’s not as hands-on with the writing of this series as he is with the extended Yellowstone universe. For most watchers, Sylvester Stallone is likely the draw here. The Oscar winner plays a New York mob capo who is banished to Tulsa by his family after serving a 25-year sentence in prison. (The first season is showrun by The Sopranos writer Terence Winter, which tracks.) In his new town, he has to claw himself back to a position of power, which he does— somewhat goofily—by storming the first weed shop he can find and threatening the staff for a cut of their profits. What binds most of Sheridan’s shows together is a thread of family and protecting the home base. But Tulsa lacks a strong foundation, leaving the plot mechanics watered down and generic.

9. Mayor of Kingstown

Not to be confused with Mare of Easttown, Mayor of Kingstown is currently in its fourth season, making it one of the longest-running Sheridan shows. It has a darker, grittier premise than most of his other shows. Jeremy Renner stars as Mike McLusky, who plays a power broker in the fictional for-profit prison town of Kingstown, Michigan. McLusky keeps busy mediating between the prison, police, and crime in the city, with a particular focus on systemic racism and corruption. Needless to say, there is a lot of violence here; it’s a bleak watch that only gets bleaker as you go along. But as with Tulsa King, the lead performance might be enough to keep audiences around—along with Edie Falco’s eventual arrival to the show.

8. Marshals

If Paramount has anything to do with it, there will never be an end to expanding the Yellowstone universe. Marshals isn’t bad, per se, it’s just a complete 180 from what made Yellowstone so captivating. Here, Sheridan hands the reins to SEAL Team showrunner Spencer Hudnut to funnel Yellowstone through the lens of a network procedural. In the new series, Luke Grimes reprises his role as Kayce, the very likable Dutton son who always placed duty and family loyalty ahead of anything else. The poor guy has lost most people in his life—his father (killed off when Kevin Costner famously exited Yellowstone), his adopted brother (stabbed to death by his sister), and his wife Monica, killed off-screen before the pilot of this new series.

Kayce and his son Tate (Brecken Merrill) are mourning these many losses when a new opportunity comes knocking: U.S. Marshal Pete Calvin (Logan Marshall-Green) is assembling a new specialized team to keep Montana’s criminal activity in check. Kayce is convinced to join alongside a resourceful gunslinging trio: Belle Skinner (Arielle Kebbel), Andrea Cruz (Ash Santos), and Miles Kittle (Tatanka Means). Gone are the lengthy dinner scenes and rants about family values. Instead, we get 42-minute episodes and a predictable structure: sprinklings of character development, a generic drug dealer or gang that needs to be taken out, and a tidy resolution. It’s a little generic with lots of room to grow, if the Yellowstone crumbs are enough to keep you tuning in week-to-week.

7. Lawmen: Bass Reeves

Sheridan wasn’t the creator or writer of this show (Chad Feehan serves as showrunner), but he played a role in developing it, so we’re including it as part of his broader televisual universe. Lawmen features an impressive leading performance by David Oyelowo as Bass Reeves, one of the first Black deputy U.S. Marshals in the Midwest in the 1860s. The show spans 15 years and has some of the most entertaining on-horseback shoot-out scenes of any recent Western. Sadly, even with the help of guest stars like Dennis Quaid and Donald Sutherland, it’s not a consistently engaging watch, despite Reeves’s fascinating biography.

6. Landman

Landman feels just like Yellowstone, but about the oil industry. Sometimes, somehow, that works. Billy Bob Thornton plays Tommy Norris, the grumpy landman in question, who works for an oil company in West Texas. He balances his time between putting out fires around town on behalf of his boss (Jon Hamm), rekindling his relationship with his ex-wife Angela (Ali Larter), and talking about sex with Ainsley (Michelle Randolph), his 17-year-old daughter, which is as uncomfortable as it sounds.

Right when the show feels like it’s hitting you over the head with fossil-fuel propaganda, it balances out by bringing in an outside perspective—an out-of-town pitbull lawyer (Kayla Wallace) who might be the secret sauce that makes this show work. Whether or not Landman is actually good is up for debate, but it’s probably worth hanging on to see how Demi Moore’s role will be expanded in the second season.

5. Lioness

It was not at all a surprise to find out Sheridan is helming an upcoming Call of Duty film adaptation after watching Lioness. The show is the most explosive—and perhaps expensive—of the bunch, with large shoot-out scenes, tanks, torture, and helicopters. The plot can be convoluted, but it’s kept interesting by performances from a handful of Oscar-winning actors.

Zoe Saldaña plays Joe McNamara, a CIA senior officer in charge of the Lioness program, which trains women to go undercover in anti-terror operations that, somehow, always go sideways. She’s supervised by her boss, Kaitlyn Meade (Nicole Kidman), and U.S. Secretary of State Edwin Mullins (Morgan Freeman). Sheridan sometimes appears on the show to shoot guns and drive around military vehicles.

It’s quite the cast, but the supporting players here really make it come together, especially Cruz Manuelos (Laysla De Oliveira), a marine recruited for the Lioness mission in the first season, who returns again in the second to mentor a new young woman. This is Sheridan’s only show that centers more women than men, and the women in question are definitely tougher than the average cowboy.

4. The Madison

The Madison is a pleasant surprise in Sheridan’s filmography, in which grief is the central protagonist. Michelle Pfeiffer gives a heart-wrenching performance as Stacy, the chic, New York-based matriarch of the Clyburn family. When her husband of 40 years (Preston, played by Kurt Russell) and his brother are killed in a tragic plane crash, Stacy and her family journey to Montana to bury them and grieve. Along the way, between scenic landscapes and friendly cowboys, they begin to see why Preston loved escaping to the wilderness so much. Turns out, they might actually like this little life on the rustic ranch after all.

The Madison is beautifully directed by Christina Alexandra Voros over six episodes and is notably more sparse in plot than most Sheridan shows. Gone are the villains and convoluted plotlines (at least for now), replaced with spaciousness and heartfelt conversations that are soothing to watch—not to mention many fish-out-of-water hijinks from a group of New Yorkers trying to survive lighting a fire or using an outhouse. Critics are mixed on The Madison and there are no Yellowstone Easter eggs to be found here, but this is undoubtedly a return to form for Pfeiffer, and definitely worth the watch.

3. 1923

After 1883, it was rumored there would be some kind of sequel series or continuation. Sheridan landed on a 20th-century check-in with the Dutton family in the middle of the Prohibition era in Montana, setting his sights beyond the ranch for his most ambitious show to date. Not only do we follow John Dutton’s grandparents (played by Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren) securing the property, but we follow Spencer Dutton (Brandon Sklenar), who is trying to make his way back to Montana all the way from Kenya, and Teonna Rainwater (Aminah Nieves), a young Apsáalooke woman who escapes a violent residential school. The scale and production design are impressive here, even if the scattered focus makes what’s happening on the ranch a little less compelling than usual.

The show that started it all. Over five seasons, we follow the Dutton family through the highs and the lows of trying to hold their grasp on the expensive Yellowstone Ranch. They fight off outside stakeholders who want the land and navigate betrayals in the family, all the while processing the family trauma of losing both the matriarch and a son before the series even starts.

In terms of pure adrenaline entertainment, some of Yellowstone‘s best episodes are the ones with explosive confrontations or violent shoot-outs, but the quieter ones are what make the show so special: romantic moments between fan favorites Beth (Kelly Reilly) and Rip (Cole Hauser) or, sometimes, just an average day at the rodeo. What keeps Yellowstone from our number-one spot are some meandering plot lines and Costner’s clunky exit from the show in the final season. (He weaseled his way out of his contract to go make a self-produced movie series.) Yellowstone is inconsistent, but it’s sure to live on in the many planned spin-offs coming our way in the near future.

1. 1883

1883 is in a league of its own. Since it’s a miniseries, it has a well-plotted arc and a satisfying but heartbreaking conclusion, giving it the finality that Yellowstone struggled with. Over 10 engaging and beautifully directed episodes, we find out how the Dutton family ended up on the Yellowstone Ranch.

James Dillard (Tim McGraw) and Margaret Dutton (Faith Hill) leave Tennessee after the Civil War and journey west for greener pastures. It’s an arduous journey: They lose their wagons while crossing rivers and get caught in the crosshairs between raiders and Indigenous tribes. The show is told through the perspective of 17-year-old daughter Elsa Dutton (Isabel May), who also narrates 1923.

Needless to say, not everyone will survive this trek before they settle in Montana, making for an emotionally impactful story of resourcefulness, allyship, and family.