Just when Yellowstone thirsts have finally been quenched, Paramount+ has another tale to tangle out the existential issues of life in the you ess of ay.

With Landman, Taylor Sheridan takes what Yellowstone did for ranching in Montana and turns it to the world of oil extraction in West Texas.

 

 

If you needed any further evidence of how successful Yellowstone and its overlord Sheridan have become, the call sheet for Landman is a decent indication. It’s a murderer’s row of greats: Billy Bob Thornton, Jon Hamm, Demi Moore, Andy Garcia and Michael Peña.

 

 

In this masculine ideal setting, Landman is populated with women in a man’s world. Like Yellowstone’s Beth Dutton, the show has a fantasy of the empowered, kick-ass woman with Demi Moore and Ali Larter’s powerhouse wives. But they’re always operating in service of the men around them.

 

 

Moore is wholly wasted as the dutiful wife, stuck in scenes where the camera leaves her in favour of Hamm gabbing on the phone, while Larter’s Angela follows Beth down the path to becoming an over-sexed, grizzled hellcat.

 

 

The most egregious entry is Tommy’s teenage daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph), whose scenes play out like a lo-fi Electra Complex nightmare. Inexplicably, she is almost always barely dressed, prancing around in front of her dad and his geezer mates with creepy lingering shots over her rear end. Is this something a teenager would really do? Or what a certain man would like to think a teenager would do?