Television series

Godless

Name: Godless
Genre: Drama, Western
Released: 2017
Cast: Merritt Wever, Michelle Dockery, Jeff Daniels, Jack O'Connell, Thomas Brodie Sangster

Godless is a widescreen, slow-burn Western miniseries built around a town where the men are mostly gone and the women run everything — until a scripture-quoting outlaw comes looking for the fugitive hiding among them. It's gorgeously shot, unhurried, and more interested in grief and self-reliance than shootouts, though it delivers those too when it finally lets go.

TVMaze rating

8.0

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Deadwood2004

The gold standard for prestige Westerns: filthy, Shakespearean dialogue, a real frontier town built from mud and greed rather than myth. If Godless made you want more moral rot and period texture, start here.

But The dialogue is dense and stagey; some viewers find it more exhausting than immersive, at least for the first few episodes.

Lonesome Dove

An epic cattle-drive miniseries with the same unhurried, character-first patience as Godless, plus career-best work from Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. It's the classic against which every modern Western measures itself.

But It's long, gentle in pace, and shot in an older TV style that can feel dated compared to Godless's cinematic sweep.

Hell or High Water2016

Swap horses for pickup trucks: two brothers robbing banks across a dying Texas landscape, with the same sense of a hard, unforgiving country shaping its people. Tense, lean, and quietly devastating.

But It's contemporary, not period, so if you wanted more horses and hats specifically, this trades that entirely for asphalt.

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Johnny Guitar1954

Same core idea as Godless — a self-sufficient woman and her town under siege by violent men who can't stand it — but told through 1950s studio melodrama instead of prestige TV grit.

A saloon-owning woman faces down a mob of men who resent her independence — decades before Godless, this Technicolor melodrama already understood that the most dangerous thing in the West was a woman who didn't need anyone.

But The performances are big and theatrical in a very 1950s way; if you want realism, this will feel operatic instead.

The Power of the Dog2021no page yet

A Western turned inward — all repressed cruelty and simmering menace on a Montana ranch, with Benedict Cumberbatch terrifying in a way that recalls Frank Griffin's quiet control. Gorgeous and unsettling.

But There's barely any action; it's a psychological chamber piece that some will find airless rather than gripping.

Hostiles2017no page yet

Christian Bale as a cavalry officer forced into an uneasy alliance, wrestling with the same questions Godless asks about violence, guilt, and who gets to be redeemed. Bleak, beautifully shot, morally serious.

But It's relentlessly grim with little levity, and the brutality can feel punishing rather than illuminating.

True Grit2010

The Coens' version gives you a fierce, self-possessed young woman navigating a lawless frontier full of dangerous men — a neat mirror to Alice Fletcher's steel. Funny, tense, and gorgeously spare.

But It's tighter and more plot-driven than Godless's sprawl, so if you wanted more atmosphere and less momentum, it's a different rhythm.

The Sisters Brothers2018no page yet

A shaggy, melancholy Western about two hitmen brothers that swaps grand myth for something sadder and funnier, with the same interest in violent men trying to imagine another life for themselves.

But Its tone shifts between comedy and tragedy in ways that can feel uneven if you're expecting straight drama.

The Homesman2014

Hilary Swank and Tommy Lee Jones escort three women across brutal frontier territory in a film obsessed, like Godless, with what the West actually cost its women rather than its heroes.

But It's deliberately unglamorous and sorrowful, closer to endurance than entertainment, and the ending divides people sharply.

Yellowstone2018

Trade the 1880s for now: a family fighting to hold onto land in a modern West that's just as lawless underneath the surface. Big, soapy, gorgeous scenery, easy to binge.

But It's pulpier and less interested in nuance than Godless — more melodrama than meditation, and it knows it.

The Good, the Bad, the Weird2008

Strips the Western down to its bare skeleton — pursuit, gang, gunfights, a vast unforgiving landscape — and rebuilds it as gonzo Korean action-comedy, proving the genre's bones travel anywhere.

A Korean manhunt-across-the-desert epic, chasing a treasure map instead of a fugitive, with the same three-way tension of outlaw, lawman, and wildcard drifter — but shot like a fever dream, all speed and chaos.

But It's frantic and maximalist where Godless is patient; if you loved the stillness, this is its exact opposite energy.

Bone Tomahawk2015no page yet

Same premise — a vulnerable frontier community, a rescue mission, a merciless outside threat — but Godless's simmering menace here boils over into full horror-movie register.

A posse rides out from a small frontier town to rescue captives from something far worse than an outlaw gang. It has Godless's isolation and dread, then detonates into outright horror.

But It earns its reputation for extreme gore in its back half; squeamish viewers should know exactly what they're signing up for.