A Lisa Johnson Mandell / Tandy Culpepper TV Review: All Things Taylor Sheridan

Westerns. The public has an insatiable appetite for them, and the television industry has served up a plethora of them.

These are but a few: The Lone Ranger. Wagon Train. Bonanza. Gunsmoke. The Rifleman. Have Gun, Will Travel and Rawhide. Bonanza ran for 14 years, but the longest running series of all is Gunsmoke which aired for 20 years. My personal favorite was The Wild Wild West. I had a big crush on Robert Conrad back then.

Oh, and let’s not forget the weirdly fascinating WestWorld.

But if you look up the word prolific in the Merriam Webster dictionary and you’ll find three definitions. The third may strike you as particularly noteworthy: “marked by abundant inventiveness or productivity”

And that definition doesn’t apply to every Western TV series , but it fits the Taylor Sheridan’s work. Not all the shows he’s created are Westerns, but we think his Westerns are the best. The modern cowboy drama Yellowstone, which ran for five seasons, and the oil rig drama Landman, which recently has been renewed for a second season, are our favorites.

Sheridan’s output seems to expand with each passing year. Add to Sheridan’s roster non-Westerns like Mayor of Kingstown, Tulsa King and Lioness,  and it’s an almost inconceivable amount of content for one man to produce. We don’t see how he does it.

The Texas denizen, 54, spent his formative years in Ft.Worth and began his career as an actor, but circumstances left him feeling dissatisfied, so he – pun very much intended – took the bull by the horns and turned his attention to writing for the big and small screens. As it turns out, Sheridan is very good at both.

In the latest The Hollywood Beat TV podcast, we review Sheridan’s small screen empire — including a prominent character or two. If you’ve seen Yellowstone and Landman, see what you think of our assessments. If you haven’t seen them, what are you waiting for? Saddle up!