“Landman” shows why Taylor Sheridan’s NBCUniversal deal could reshape TV drama

With “Yellowstone” in the rearview mirror, but never entirely out of sight, “Landman” may be the most quintessentially Taylor Sheridan show on TV right now. For Paramount+ subscribers, that statement might spark some debate, since there’s rarely a time when a fresh season of one of Sheridan’s shows isn’t in rotation.

A fourth season of “Mayor of Kingstown,” starring Jeremy Renner, is already in progress as “Landman” embarks on its second. Sheridan’s Sylvester Stallone vehicle “Tulsa King” is winding up its third.

Out of the trifecta, “Landman,” based on the podcast series “Boomtown,” is the only one entirely written by Sheridan, identifiable by its florid, F-bomb-encrusted prose and inappropriate conversations that rocket past the realm of offensive into absolute hilarity as West Texas oil executive Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) bounces from one calamity to the next. Most involve something that’s gone wrong in the fields leased by M-Tex, the company Tommy functionally runs while its owner nervously pores over paperwork in a glass-and-steel office.

But he is just as frequently sideswiped by family crises created by the disasters he married and birthed. The series premiere distinguished itself by trapping Tommy and his daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph) in the most nightmarish father-daughter talk imaginable.

Season 2 upstages that discomfort with Tommy sending his ex-wife and current lover, Angela (Ali Larter), into a fury by holding a miniature symposium about her menstrual cycle with his colleagues, Dale (James Jordan), a petroleum engineer, and M-Tex’s long-suffering attorney, Nathan (Colm Feore, blessed with impressive comic timing). This qualifies as dinner conversation in the company-owned house Tommy, Angela and Ainsley improbably share with Dale and Nathan.

Angela’s vivid mood swings are a wellspring of entertainment; Tommy associates her phone number with an orchestral ringtone that sounds like a horror movie jump scare. So his provocation makes zero sense, until we remember that winding up Angela is her version of foreplay.

“Your job on this planet is to achieve the impossible, and mine is to properly motivate you,” Angela informs Tommy in another episode. “That’s why God created tits. Love you!”

So much about “Landman” is improbable if not just plain wrong, two hallmarks of TV shows we may have once described as guilty pleasures. Nowadays, they qualify as escapism confirming our assumptions about ridiculous, rapacious people, which is terribly fun. Regardless, the show’s expanding audience makes it likely the show will surpass “Yellowstone” in notoriety. There’s plenty to back that wager, beginning with Thornton’s enduring popularity and the second-season additions of Sam Elliott as Tommy’s father and Andy Garcia as a sketchy venture capitalist who holds a high position with the drug cartels that make Tommy’s job more dangerous and difficult.

People also strongly reacted to news about Sheridan’s impending decampment from Paramount to join NBCUniversal, which is effective promotion in itself.

That scoop, courtesy of Puck, was accompanied by plenty of behind-the-scenes gossip concerning Paramount’s new owner, David Ellison, who went out of his way to call Sheridan “a singular genius with a perfect track record” shortly after the ink dried on the Paramount Skydance merger.

Behind the scenes, according to several sources, Sheridan made it known he was not so fond of Ellison. So NBCUniversal swooped in and snagged him for an eight-year film deal that starts in March, while also securing Sheridan to write and produce shows exclusively for NBCU platforms such as NBC and Peacock after 2028, when his Paramount contract ends.

The public doesn’t care much about industry dish as long as their favorite shows keep on coming. And Sheridan’s current crop, which includes his Nicole Sheridan and Zoe Saldaña action thriller “Lioness,” will likely go on in some form on Paramount. Creators leave their old networks for greener pastures all the time, but the licenses to their titles stay with the company that originally produced them.

This is how Shonda Rhimes and Ryan Murphy abandoned their old homes on ABC and FX for Netflix without shows like “Grey’s Anatomy” and “American Horror Story” shutting down. Murphy has since returned to the Disney fold while continuing with his “Monster” franchise for Netflix.

Sheridan only stands to gain in his new deal — potentially to the tune of $1 billion, according to unconfirmed and highly optimistic reports. He’ll only snag something in the neighborhood of that payday if he meets a specified production threshold and all those projects succeed. If there’s one immutable fact about TV, it is that there’s no such thing as a sure thing.

(Emerson Miller/Paramount+) Jacob Lofland as Cooper Norris in “Landman”

What Sheridan offers to NBC is more intriguing to parse. With linear TV viewership in decline for everything besides live sports, networks are desperate to secure scripted hits. For decades, that’s meant locking down talent like Dick Wolf, whose “Law & Order” and “Chicago” franchises (“Chicago P.D.,” “Chicago Fire,” “Chicago Med”) have sustained the Peacock network, as well as Rhimes and Murphy. But beyond the procedurals for which Wolf is famous, along with a few bright comedies, the broadcast primetime landscape is as creatively sparse as the dry brush covering the Permian Basin.

People like Tommy know such wastelands hold opportunity. Most of Sheridan’s hit streak is built around the strivings of rough men willing to do whatever it takes to rule out-of-the-way corners of the country. Some muscle their way to the mountaintop, like Kevin Costner’s “Yellowstone” patriarch John Dutton or Stallone’s Dwight Manfredi on “Tulsa King.” Others scramble to maintain what they have.

Fundamentally, these shows are primetime soap operas – a genre that hasn’t seen a hit on network TV in many seasons. Sheridan might not break that curse, but if there were a kind of show that could, he might model it on “Landman.”

Tommy is paid handsomely to interface with government officials, fellow oil executives and roughnecks at drill sites, running triage when things go sideways, and convincing the local cartels using the company’s road to keep a low profile — or not to kill him, which is how the first season ended.

His best hope for carrying forth his legacy with pride, if he genuinely cares about such a thing, is his son Cooper (Jacob Lofland). He’s determined to follow Tommy into the petroleum business but leaps headlong into situations he’s ill-prepared to navigate, like falling for Ariana (Paulina Chávez), the grieving widow of a co-worker who went up in flames in front of his eyes, or engaging in business ventures that might not be wise.

(Emerson Miller/Paramount+) Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy Norris and Demi Moore as Cami in “Landman”

Plenty of people relate to Tommy, a plain-spoken executive with a working man’s hands and a defeated father’s liver, chain-smoking his way around Midland, Texas. He’s well-off but constantly whining about how much debt he’s drowning in. He argues with the radio and launches into stemwinders about General Mills’ breakfast propaganda when a server politely asks him if he wants something more than just coffee.

He flies around Texas in a private jet, but it belongs to the much wealthier people entrusting him to handle their business. Last season, that was Jon Hamm’s Monty Miller, but the perpetually stressed-out M-Tex owner died and left the business to his raven-haired widow, Cami (Demi Moore). Season 2 promotes Moore, still riding a career renaissance, from an underutilized background player to the woman charged with keeping the hyenas at bay.

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Cami’s elevated status matters in the Sheridanverse, where women are divided between ball-busters with predatory business instincts that match or exceed those of their male peers, or expensive sexual accessories. “Landman” divides these adversarial teams by hair color, because in Sheridan’s Texas, God made blondes to drive rich old men into poverty. Dark-haired women, meanwhile, get things done.

On one end of that spectrum sit Cami and Rebecca Savage (Kayla Wallace), a young attorney hired for her ability to eviscerate teams of men who underestimate her.

On the other side sits Ainsley, who would lose a grade-school spelling bee to a bag of hair extensions yet manages to get into college as a cheerleading squad walk-on. “If it were in my power to deny you acceptance to this university, I would do it with an enthusiasm professors in our psychology department might wish to study,” says the admissions officer in a speech broadcasting every bit of disdain Sheridan has for people – women, specifically – like Ainsley.

“You’re using a lot of words I don’t fully understand,” mewls Ainsley.

“I’m doing it on purpose,” hisses the beleaguered woman who is, you probably guessed, a brunette.

Is “Landman” a drama or an unintentional comedy? Is it good TV or one of the silliest time-killers you will watch in any given week? It’s all this, and no critical assessment, one way or the other, really matters. That’s precisely why there’s a fair chance that you’ll be seeing more shows like it a few years from now. It’s a Sheridan, “Landman” kind of TV world, and a lot of powerful people hope we’ll get hooked on how messily it unfolds.

Season 2 of “Landman” premieres Sunday, Nov. 16 on Paramount+.