Taylor Sheridan certainly didn’t invent Neo-Western TV, but he sure has helped grow its popularity with his Yellowstone stable of shows, including 1883, 1923, and the upcoming The Madison and 6666. He has also has dabbled with introducing real-life figures into his shows, something that HBO’s Shakespearean Deadwood delighted in doing, and Netflix’s American Primeval is gearing up to run with that cowboy ball. Not that this will be a Yellowstone franchise clone by any stretch. The streaming service is simply aiming to catch up on the Neo-Western craze after dominating in countless other genres.
Presumably, that would be why The Abandons (revolving around renegade families surviving in 1850s Oregon) got the green light, even if that series is finishing a first season under chaotic conditions after Kurt Sutter’s departure. Now, the Australian Outback-set Territory series appears to be primed for future seasons, but before that happens, American Primeval will arrive to pull no punches about survival on the 1850s frontier.
Plot
If you thought 1883 was brutal to watch for some scenes of violence, American Primeval is here with a proverbial “hold my beer.” The series hails from Creator/Director Pete Berg (Friday Night Lights), Executive Producer Eric Newman (Narcos), and Screenwriter Mark L. Smith (The Revenant). In an atypical move, we’ll start with the series synopsis:
“This is America… 1857. Up is down, pain is everywhere, innocence and tranquility are losing the battle to hatred and fear. Peace is the shrinking minority, and very few possess grace — even fewer know compassion. There is no safe haven in these brutal lands, and only one goal matters: survival. AMERICAN PRIMEVAL is a fictionalized dramatization and examination of the violent collision of culture, religion, and community as men and women fight and die to keep or control this land.”
Production was intense with actors attending a “cowboy camp,” according to Peter Berg, who revealed to Vanity Fair that this process included “learning to ride horses in three feet of snow.” This unfortunately didn’t prevent Taylor Kitsch, who portrays a guide assigned to help Betty Gilpin’s character and her son survive, from breaking a foot. As for Gilpin’s experience, she grew accustomed to filming “intense” action scenes in a corset, and she declared, “Anytime one of the guys would start to complain about being uncomfortable in their costume, my hand would rise to their trachea.”
The action sequences in this movie include the Mountain Meadows Massacre, during which Mormon soldiers killed hundreds of pioneers at the behest of Brigham Young. Meanwhile, according to a Vanity Fair preview, “This occurs as Indigenous nations including the Southern Paiutes of Utah and the Northwestern Shoshone fight for survival and security in the same territory the Mormons are encroaching on.”
A pair of fictionalized characters, Jacob (Dane DeHaan) and Abish Pratt (Saura Lightfoot-Leon), will portray the perspective of Mormon pioneers, but several historical figures will appear, including frontiersman/Utah legislator Wild Bill Hickman (as opposed to Hickok) and mountain man/Army scout Jim Bridger (Shea Whigham). Then there would be Kim Coates (Sons Of Anarchy) as Mormon Church President Brigham Young, who was attempting to secure Utah as a Mormon stronghold by leveraging strategy involving Fort Bridger.
Coates told Tudum that this role was “the offer of a lifetime,” and he relished being able to dive into historical texts for research. He gained weight, dyed his hair, and did the works. Still, he would never want to experience 1957:
“As an actor, you have to make choices. Things start at the top and filter down, and we mustn’t shy away from both the nastiness and the goodness in our history. And this particular story has some of both, and it has some lessons that we can and should learn from. But boy, it was tough to survive in 1857. I don’t know how anyone did.”
Although American Primeval is dramatized, the series has taken great pains to achieve historical and cultural accuracy with Julie O’Keefe acting as Indigenous Cultural Consultant. The expertise of artisans representing Shoshone Bannock, Navajo, Quapaw, Osage, Choctaw, Caddo, and Oglala Lakota people helped to pull this project together from the inside out.
Cast
Taylor Kitsch and Betty Gilpin lead the cast that includes Dane DeHaan, Saura Lightfoot-Leon, Jai Courtney, Shea Whigham, Derek Hinkey, Joe Tippett, Preston Mota, and Shawnee Pourier. Guest stars include Kim Coates, Lucas Neff, Tokala Black Elk, Nick Hargrove, Irene Bedard, Kyle Davis, Alex Breaux, Kip Weeks, Jeremiah Bitsui, Dominic Bogart, and Alex Fine.
Release Date
The first season’s six episodes will stream on Jan. 9, 2025. This key art is a doozy.
Trailer
Sit down for this one. It is intense:
