American television received a rude awakening when Taylor Sheridan rode into town a decade ago like an old-fashioned Western gunslinger. This self-proclaimed outsider from the depths of Texas has a genius for rugged melodramas where men are men and the pick-up trucks are bigger than a Panzer IV – and the industry was shocked to discover that his roughneck formula appealed to a huge untapped audience.
He continues down that dusty trail with the enjoyably over-the-top second season of his Texas family drama Landman (Paramount+), where the major draw is once again a grippingly grizzled Billy Bob Thornton.
Thornton plays Tommy Norris, a hard-bitten oil executive who thinks emotions are for wimps and whose mantra is Donald Trump’s favourite catchphrase, “drill baby, drill”. It’s a brilliantly gnarly turn by the now 70-year-old Oscar winner. However, he more than meets his match in another veteran A-lister, Demi Moore. She is fantastically flinty as Cami Miller, the widow of Tommy’s former boss, Monty (Jon Hamm), whose death at the end of series one saw Tommy elevated to the head of M-Tex Oil.
Starting with his breakout hit, Yellowstone, Sheridan’s great insight has been that the television beloved by the matcha latte set –smarty-pants fare such as Succession – isn’t necessarily what the rest of America wants. Daring critics to sneer their worst, he has specialised in a specifically all-American brand of entertainment that has the washed-out quality of ripped blue jeans.
