HOW THE COWBOY WAS COLONIZED

TAYLOR SHERIDAN'S Yellowstone is known for being a red-state show. But its political ideology is drawn from the left

- Andrea Long Chu

IN THE FIRST PLACE, Yellowstone is not a good show. But that’s no pebble in its hoof. Since premiering on the little-known Paramount Network in 2018, the neo-western drama has grown into the most-watched scripted series on cable or broadcast television. The show, which co-creator Taylor Sheridan writes, produces, and often directs, stars Kevin Costner as a fifth-generation Montana cattleman fighting to defend his ranch from threats on every side: land developers, Native activists, biker gangs, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, paid assassins, people from California. The fourth season drew an average of 11.3 million viewers, according to Nielsen data, clocking in below Thursday Night Football but above Monday Night Football—rawhide sandwiched between pigskins—and a staggering 17 million tuned in for the fifth-season premiere in November. But critics have largely ignored it. “It’s every old western and new western and soap opera thrown together in a blender,” Sheridan told the New York Times in 2021. “I think it infuriates and confounds some people who study storytelling.”