[Warning: General spoilers ahead.]
Y’all know I generally don’t binge watch shows, choosing instead to parcel them out, but on this one, we were asked to evaluate the first five episodes and I ended up just inhaling them. As a lifelong (but not native) Texan, I’m generally intrigued by Texas-set shows, and recent TV mogul Taylor Sheridan set his pedigree for telling Texas tales with his Oscar-nominated script for Hell or High Water. A line from that film that has stayed with me for almost a decade is, “I’ve been poor my whole life, like a disease passing from generation to generation. But not my boys, not anymore,” and that avoidance of generational poverty is threaded through Landman, Sheridan’s latest series, set in the haves and have-nots world of the oil business.
Here, the landman in question is Billy Bob Thornton’s Tommy Norris, a fixer who would do Olivia Pope proud. Never too far from his phone, he’s fighting literal and figurative fires placating his billionaire oil baron boss Monty Miller (Jon Hamm, who is apparently now a full-on vampire no longer needing sleep since this is his eleventeenth series role in a year) and managing an assortment of in-laws and outlaws in the oil patch, one of whom is his son, Cooper (Jacob Lofland).
Having recently abandoned college right before graduation, for reasons he eventually articulates, Cooper asks to be dropped right into the deep end of working in the oil patch, and Tommy installs him alongside Pablo Esparza, Michael Peña, and Alejandro Akara as Essai, Armando, and Elvio, a father-and-sons crew who are his friends, a softshoe way of letting his son dip a toe in that world while also guaranteeing a measure of his safety.
His teenage daughter, Ainsley (1923‘s Michelle Randolph), is not far behind, landing on him for spring break when her remarried mother, Angela (Ali Larter), decides to go to Cabo and doesn’t trust her to stay home on her own. Tommy’s relationship with his ex is a flaming hot mess of love-hate-loathe-rinse-repeat feelings that he can’t quit.
When Calls the Heart alumni Kayla Wallace lands in town as Rebecca, a high-powered attorney sent to damage control the events of the series opener, which I won’t spoil, while also potentially assigning a fall guy, and that doesn’t go exactly to plan. Tommy’s roommates are Sheridan utility player James Jordan from Lioness, Mayor of Kingstown, Yellowstone, and 1883 as engineer Dale, and the always-terrific Canadian treasure Colm Feore, rocking a Texas accent, as the frequently exasperated Nate, who’s essentially the on-call local attorney. Demi Moore recurs as Monty’s wife, Cami, who tries to help him maintain balance, and Paulina Chávez plays Elvio’s wife, Ariana. Mustafa Speaks is another drill boss, the aptly named Boss.
For the assorted characters threaded through the season, oil is a way through, out, or forward – and sometimes all three – as they leverage it not so much to strike it rich but to make a living or climb back from something — if they can survive its perils. I found the first five episodes a really easy, if sometimes-predictable watch anchored by a terrific ensemble cast and just a tremendous amount of dialogue.
Most of that dialogue falls to Thornton to deliver, but he’s soon joined by Wallace in articulating the ins and outs of the business and what is to be lost and gained. He’s also the POV of the show, as tragedy is never too far away, and given the insular nature of what they do, it usually befalls someone close enough that he feels that acutely, but still gets the job done. Lofland’s Cooper is the show’s soft heart as an idealistic young man who sees the side of the industry his father hoped would take longer to come and then finds himself playing defense and often threatened by the kind-hearted way he responds to it.
The series does a solid job of balancing tension, comedy, drama, and everything in between, sometimes in the same scenes as some characters do a better job than others of holding it together. Full disclosure – I’ve never picked up Yellowstone so I can’t speak to its similarity to this, but it does feel distinct from Lioness and Mayor of Kingstown, the two Sheridan universes I do know.
It’s always a fun thing when Hallmark folks take on more mainstream roles and then crush it, leaving any semblance of that former romcom identity behind. Sheridan has had in it twice now. As you may know, he took former Hallmarkie Jill Wagner’s Lioness concept and ran with it, casting her as one of the black ops military team members responsible for backing up the titular operative.
This time, we get to watch Kayla Wallace go toe to toe with Thornton and annihilate a roomful of attorneys and oilmen, and it’s exactly as delightful to behold as you think it is. But you’ll have to wait for episode 2 for her arrival — although you won’t have to wait long since it drops alongside episode 1. Another fun fact for the Hallmark crowd, aside from Wallace’s showstopping turn — Kristoffer Polaha and Colin Ferguson show up for a couple of scenes with Hamm this season.
Landman premieres Sunday, November 17th, at 3:01 am ET on Paramount. Here are a few sneak peeks.
Photos courtesy of Emerson Miller/Paramount+ and video courtesy of Paramount+.
