Television series

Yellowstone

Name: Yellowstone
Genre: Drama, Western
Released: 2018
Cast: Cole Hauser, Luke Grimes, Kelly Reilly, Kelsey Chow, Forrie J. Smith

Yellowstone is a sprawling modern Western about the Dutton family's fight to keep their Montana ranch intact against developers, tribal land claims, and their own worst impulses. It's soapy, violent, and gorgeous — helicopter shots of cattle drives cut with boardroom betrayals and bar-fight brutality. Watch it for the landscape, the family dysfunction, and Kevin Costner's slow-burn patriarch. Best for viewers who like their drama big, unsubtle, and pulpy.

TVMaze rating

8.1

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Succession2018

Swap cattle for media conglomerates and you get the same rotten-family-fighting-over-the-throne engine, just funnier and crueler, with dialogue sharp enough to draw blood.

But No horses, no gunfights — it's boardrooms and private jets, so the Western itch won't be scratched.

Longmire2012

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But Much slower and more procedural — a mystery-of-the-week show, not a saga of family collapse.

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Same structural engine as Yellowstone — a dynasty defended through violence and loyalty, with succession as the real plot — just wearing a mob suit instead of a Stetson.

Coppola's mob epic runs on the exact same fuel as Yellowstone — a father protecting an empire, sons who each represent a different answer to what the family should become.

But It's slower and more classical than modern prestige TV, with none of the wide-open scenery or contemporary politics.

Justified2010

Elmore Leonard's Kentucky lawman story has the same drawling menace and moral murk as Yellowstone, with crackling dialogue and violence that always feels earned.

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Ozark2017

A family drawn deeper into violence to protect what they've built, with the same slow moral erosion and a matriarch who might be the most dangerous person in the room.

But Set in the Ozarks' money-laundering underworld, not open range — the scenery and stakes feel very different.

Bloodline2015

A close-knit family with a hidden rot at its center, told with the same simmering dread and gorgeous location work — Florida Keys standing in for Montana's big sky.

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A dustier, more classical Western following the building of the transcontinental railroad, with the same clash of settlers, natives, and capital reshaping the land.

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Godless2017

A stark, beautifully shot limited series about a town run by women after the men are wiped out — same sun-bleached vistas, same reckoning with violence and land.

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Dallas1978

The granddaddy of the oil-and-cattle family soap — scheming siblings, a domineering patriarch, and enough betrayal to make the Duttons look almost restrained.

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Giant1956

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The West1996

Everything Yellowstone dramatizes — stolen land, broken treaties, the violence underneath the frontier myth — actually happened, and this is the sober, factual version of that same story.

Ken Burns' sweeping documentary series digs into the real history behind Yellowstone's fictional land wars — the treaties broken, the tribes displaced, the myths built to justify it all.

But It's a slow, fact-dense nonfiction series with none of the melodrama, gunfights, or twisty plotting that make Yellowstone addictive.