[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
“I am haunted by waters,” is the closing line of A Rive Runs Through It, Robert Redford’s much-loved film about brothers. set in Montana and framed with a throughline about the peace that comes from their time together fishing in the state’s idyllic rivers. It’s a thematic cousin to Tyler Sheridan’s equally gorgeous new series, The Madison, also set in Montana and framed by the titular Madison River
The juggernaut that is the Sheridan universe spans a lot of territory, so there’s something for everyone. I have watched every hour of Mayor of Kingstown, Lioness, and Landman. And before there was Yellowstone, Sheridan was best known for his feature screenplays, the deservedly Oscar-nominated Hell or High Water and its haunting follow up, Wind River.
As a writer, he often delves into the terrible things people can do to each other, but he always comes back around to the idea of family—blood and found. And to a variable degree, despite a predominately testosterone-heavy oeuvre, he makes room for female voices, most significantly so in Lioness. This Sunday, he treads in unfamiliar territory with a female-led and female-heavy story of grief and a deep, lifelong love set among a one-percenter family who experience a life-changing loss.
Headlined by an exquisite Michelle Pfeiffer, in only her second episodic series, The Madison,follows the Clyburn clan, who become unmoored by a tragedy. Pfieffer is Stacy Clyburn, the matriarch of an extremely wealthy New York family. She spends her days philanthropically seeding the earnings of her husband, Preston (Kurt Russell) and moving among the city’s very elite.
Their two daughters, Abby (Beau Garrett) and Paige (Elle Chapman), are grown but still tethered to the family’s finances. Abby is adrift, recently divorced and raising two daughters, Bridgett (Amiah Miller) and Macy (Alaina Pollock). Paige works in PR and is two years into her marriage to Russell (Patrick J. Adams), a finance bro.
The gregarious but affectionate Preston is a man of two worlds, splitting his time between New York and Montana, where he and his brother, Paul (Matthew Fox), have built a small ranch alongside a river valley and spend a considerable amount of time on it catching and releasing fish and bonding as brothers do. We’re never explicitly told how Preston makes his money, aside from also being a finance bro, but he’s made a lot of it, and his family lives very, very comfortably, and he’s afforded the freedom to have a bit of a double life, without any nefarious undertones.
When the family’s idyll is suddenly upended, Stacy and all her girls and Russell get on a plane to Montana. Once there, time essentially stops. They’re out of literally every familiar element they know, displaced from the familiar, and confined in too close quarters, so tempers invariably flare and Stacy’s relationship with her girls goes through a reset. Until they all slow down to match the pace at which they find themselves surrounded and soon come to appreciate where they are.
Stacy leans on Preston and what he’s taught her about the place—its beauty, mystery, and magic captured line by line like a map. Two locals become integral to the family. Van (Ben Schnezter) is the local sheriff’s deputy, and next-door neighbors, Cade and Kestrel (Kevin Zegers and Danielle Vasinova) and their children are unexpectedly kind.
When the Clyburns return to New York, they’re changed by their circumstance as well as from a close-up view of another way of life—and living. And where they go from there is completely up to them.
I liked this series a lot. Its slow, lyrical way of sitting with grief without moving toward a specific procedural direction feels like a new muscle for Sheridan. And he works hand in hand with Christina Alexandra Voros, who is the primary director of photography and the sole director on all six episodes, which he wrote. As the kids say, they’re working through something here and they take their time about it.
Voros frames the series with specific color choices, shading the Montana-set story in warm, amber tones and shifting to a colder palette for New York. It’s a stunningly beautiful series to watch, that’s seriously going to inspire some people who never thought twice about Montana to go have a look.
The cast is extraordinary across the board. I’ve been a Pfeiffer stan since seeing Grease 2 in a theater at 11 years old, and the material here lets her be downright primal, minus the catsuit. She and Russell co-starred together 38 years ago in Tequila Sunrise, and I was a couple of episodes in before I remembered that because they’re so wholly immersed in playing a couple who are partners in every sense and just it for each other. Russell and Fox are also very good playing brothers whose lives took different trajectories but are still tightly bound by a very specific place in the world.
Garrett and Chapman are great as their live wire daughters who are about as feral as their mama when tested but still come back together to take care of their family. Adams turns the persona we’re often used to from him down a few degrees, playing a stabilizing force who also cares very much for the family he married into. Rebecca Spence recurs as Stacy’s bestie, Liliana, who also steps up.
Among the Montana set of characters, I love the career Kevin Zegers has carved for himself with these thoughtful character roles, and he’s wonderful here, especially in a handful of scenes with Pfeiffer. Ben Schnetzer was the lead in Y: The Last Man, which I wrote about here and I legit did not recognize him from that because he disappears so completely into the role of Van. Both men have experienced their own losses, so they’re empathetic and a source of comfort, and as Stacy comments at one point, the mold for them doesn’t exist anymore. In later episodes, look for Will Arnett, who’s so low key he’s almost unrecognizable, but is fantastic as someone who helps the family.
The Madison drops its first three episodes Saturday, March 14th, at 3:01 am/2:01c on Paramount+, with the second three episodes releasing at the same time next Saturday, the 21st. While the streamer hasn’t formally confirmed a second season, Russell has disclosed in interviews that one has already been filmed, because he was double booked on Apple TV’s Monarch. Here’s a sneak peek of Season 1.
Photos courtesy of Emerson Miller for Paramount+; video courtesy of Paramount+.
