Yellowstone: Hit TV Show Exposes Cultural Divides
Yellowstone, a violent drama about family legacy and constant change in the mountains of Montana, is the most-watched show on cable television in the United States, though depending on where you live, you might not know it.
The Paramount Network drama starring Kevin Costner as the tough, scheming owner of the largest ranch in the United States drew more than 11 million viewers for its season four finale earlier this month without streaming, a viewership not seen since the heyday of 2010s mainstream shows like Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead, both of which were wildly popular and critically acclaimed. (For example, the sixth season of HBO’s fantasy epic averaged 10.61 million viewers in its first week, including streaming; AMC’s zombie apocalypse drama peaked in its fifth season in 2014–15, averaging 14.4 million viewers per episode.)
However, despite being rated on par with Thrones and The Walking Dead without an explicit streaming channel (full seasons are licensed to NBC’s Peacock, while new episodes are released on CBS’s newly launched streaming network Paramount+), Yellowstone has yet to attract the critical attention or media scrutiny of its ratings predecessors. Co-creator Taylor Sheridan (who also serves as head writer and occasional director) has earned rave reviews for his riveting neo-Westerns like Sicario, Hell or High Water, and Wind River, but Yellowstone, which premiered in 2018, has been overlooked by awards shows. (It picked up its first major nomination, the 2022 Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series, on Wednesday.) Culture sites like Vulture and Ringer have posted episode summaries, but there hasn’t been much in the way of essays, media tweets, or substantive analysis of HBO’s Succession, a raucous, painful portrait of a media conglomerate that parallels Yellowstone’s themes—massive wealth, squabbling siblings, a family defending its fortune—and stands in stark contrast to its lack of critical attention.
Streaming is supposed to be the great equalizer, whether it’s for accessing content (see: global hits like Netflix’s Squid Game, the dystopian Korean drama that reached 111 million households worldwide by the end of 2021) or segmenting into competing platforms for their IP and market share. Yellowstone offers a compelling rebuke to these trends: a word-of-mouth hit in the heartland, for lack of a better term for the loose but distinct geographic segmentation in the United States, and a phenomenon of cultural isolation between urban-oriented premium cable consumers and suburban basic cable consumers (smaller cities surrounded by farmland, suburbs, small towns, rural communities). Paramount is building a pop universe around the success of Yellowstone — the 1883 prequel, starring country music superstars Tim McGraw and Faith Hill as well as Sam Elliott, had the biggest debut for a cable show since 2015 in December — and a large part of the country hasn’t noticed.
