The Yellowstone Effect is real. Indiewire recently reported on how Paramount+ wants to use Taylor Sheridan’s universe of shows as a template for expanding franchises, which is partially why two Dexter spin offs were fast-tracked to land within a year of announcement. And this “Effect” is also why the beefy stars of A24’s The Iron Claw were photographed for Entertainment Weekly while shoveling hay and slo-mo eating ribs to promote a wrestling biopic.
Even Taylor Sheridan can’t seem to stop extending his own universe, so it’s no wonder why every other streaming service is vying for their own Yellowstone counterparts. Netflix had been actively looking for a Western epic series around the same time that Kurt Sutter went on a Bonanza binge, and presumably, The Abandons will attract both Sons Of Anarchy fans and the Yellowstone audience even though Sutter has departed the project. First, however, Netflix has pushed a less-trouble-filled neo-Western production to the small screen with Territory.
This Australian series goes down in perilous outback deserts and stars Anna Torv, Michael Dorman, Robert Taylor, Philippa Northeast, and Sam Corlett. Framed as a succession drama for the Lawson family, the show’s synopsis reads, “When the world’s largest cattle station is left without a clear successor, an epic battle for land and legacy erupts in the outback.” Six episodes rolled out with a complicated plot in which desert gangsters, fellow cattle barons, and billionaires try to seize the fictional family ranch (called Marianne Station), and critics were quick to summarize the show as an Aussie Yellowstone with viewers largely agreeing, but a few of the show’s stars do not see it.
As Sam Corlett (who portrays Marshall Lawson) and Philippa Northeast (who portrays Susie Lawson) recently told Yahoo!, they believe that Territory stands on its own cowboy legs:
“I haven’t seen too much of Yellowstone,” [Sam Corlett] says. “Obviously, it’s had such a profound impact on culture over there and here. I suppose it’s an honour to be compared, but what I know is that this is so unapologetically Australian that I don’t see it being anything like anything that has ever been on screen.”
Philippa [Northeast] says that she doesn’t really see the comparisons, saying, “Our cattle industry in Australia is so different to the industry over in America, and we wholeheartedly, in detail, go into it. So I think, it doesn’t really have a comparison in that sense.”
Comparisons or not, audiences have been flocking to the show since its Oct. 24 release date, so look for it on the Netflix Top 10 charts by country soon. As for a second season? That ball sits in Netflix’s rodeo court.
(Via Yahoo!)
