Yellowstone Review

Yellowstone became a genuine phenomenon on a channel nobody was watching, and the gap between its audience and its notices is the story of the show. What critics grant it is the look. Montana is photographed with a scale television rarely attempts, the horses and the daily work of the ranch are filmed with real knowledge, and Kevin Costner is exactly the right weathered face for a man who believes he owns a valley. Beyond that the reviews turn cold.

The plotting is soap, with rivals introduced and killed inside a season, alliances that reverse without cause and a family whose members betray each other on a schedule. The dialogue reaches for a mythic register and lands on speeches. Critics also fault the politics, a nostalgia for a frontier that never existed, offered without much examination. The supporting cast is uneven, though Kelly Reilly's Beth is a genuine creation and Cole Hauser gives Rip more than the writing does. It is enormously watchable and not, by the consensus, very good.