Yellowstone changed the game for TV Westerns. When the Duttons first arrived in Montana, the genre was mostly associated with dusty period pieces. Taylor Sheridan turned it into something bigger and bolder by introducing family warfare, corporate greed, cattle ranching, murder, romance, and enough beautiful Montana scenery to make you (briefly) consider buying a ranch yourself. When it ended, it was messier than most divorces. Still, Yellowstone’s universe kept expanding. This year alone brought three separate spin-offs: Dutton Ranch, Marshals, and The Madison.
The fun part is, I don’t think Yellowstone is “the best modern Western.” While it revived the genre, it didn’t invent the genre, and it’s clearly not the only show doing interesting things with cowboys, ranch land, and complicated people. A few of these shows share DNA with Sheridan’s world — through actors, writers, or by drawing on the TV shows that inspired Yellowstone. Others do something Yellowstone never managed to pull off. I’ve chosen 10 series because they do one specific thing better than Sheridan’s beloved series, not just because “hey, it’s also got horses!”
Why You Should Trust Me: I’ve spent nearly four years writing for MovieWeb about modern Westerns, crime dramas, action series, and Taylor Sheridan’s increasingly enormous television empire. I’ve followed Yellowstone and its spin-offs closely, but I’ve also watched several shows that helped shape the modern Western outside the Dutton universe.
‘Landman’ (2024 – Present)
Sheridan’s Own Show Might Already Be Better Than ‘Yellowstone’
Watch This If: This is Sheridan beating Sheridan at his own game. Co-created with journalist Christian Wallace and based on Wallace’s podcast “Boomtown,” Landman swaps cattle ranching for West Texas oil fields and gives Billy Bob Thornton the best role of his career. He plays Tommy Norris, a crisis-manager fixer who speaks in exhausted, profane monologues that hit harder than anything John Dutton ever said in a boardroom. The show’s first season became the most-watched original on Paramount+. The second season (which added a bigger Demi Moore role after her Oscar-nominated year) kept that momentum going with a Sunday weekly release schedule that mirrors Yellowstone’s rollout.
Skip This If: You specifically want horses, cattle, gunfights, and the open range. Landman is a modern Western in spirit, but it replaces horseback rides with oil rigs and ranch wars with corporate warfare. If the scenery is half the reason you watched Yellowstone, Landman gives you a very different postcard.
‘Dark Winds’ (2022 – Present)
A 100% Rotten Tomatoes Score for Three Seasons
Watch This If: Created by Graham Roland, who also co-created Amazon’s Jack Ryan, Dark Winds follows Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn and Officer Jim Chee of the Navajo Tribal Police as they solve crimes in the 1970s in the Navajo Nation. The first thing it does better than Yellowstone is having a perfect Rotten Tomatoes score across three consecutive seasons. Zahn McClarnon anchors the show with an internal authority, and executive producers Robert Redford and George R.R. Martin gave the show real prestige backing before Redford’s passing. Dark Winds also has an intense atmosphere. The desert is beautiful, isolated, and sometimes unsettling. The writers use that atmosphere to build the show’s mystery instead of using it as a backdrop for a confrontation.
Skip This If: You want big, sweeping Montana vistas and family melodrama. Dark Winds is a procedural mystery at its core, and it solves one case at a time rather than building toward a season-long war over land. The pacing and scope feel smaller by design.
‘Outer Range’ (2022 – 2024)
The Sci-Fi Western That Got Canceled Right When It Got Great
Watch This If: You think Yellowstone would be more interesting if someone dropped a giant supernatural mystery into the middle of the Dutton family’s ranch. Amazon pitched Outer Range as “Lost meets Yellowstone,” and honestly, that’s not far off. Josh Brolin plays Royal Abbott, a Wyoming rancher fighting a rival family who wants his land. The series also features a mysterious black void in the pasture that bends time and turns the entire show into something strange and ambitious. That’s just the beginning. From there, Outer Range mixes ranch warfare, family secrets, murder, time travel, and cosmic weirdness into its Western storylines. It sounds ridiculous on paper, but trust me, it’s the best sci-fi Western out there.
Skip This If: I’m not pretending this is the best choice for everybody. If your favorite Yellowstone moments aren’t the ones when the show gets strange, philosophical, or violent, Outer Range isn’t for you. Also, the series ended on a cliffhanger, with major character arcs unresolved, and there’s no indication that a revival is coming.
‘Longmire’ (2012 – 2017)
The Actual Blueprint for ‘Yellowstone’
Watch This If: You love Yellowstone‘s Wyoming setting but wish there was less Dutton family drama and more actual police work. Developed by Hunt Baldwin and John Coveny from Craig Johnson’s novels, Longmire follows Walt Longmire (Robert Taylor), the sheriff of fictional Absaroka County, as he investigates murders and other crimes while dealing with his own grief and the complicated relationships with the people around him. I think it’s arguably the show that proved a modern-day Western procedural could work, years before Sheridan turned that idea into a TV empire. Yellowstone often treats Montana like a battlefield where billionaires, developers, ranchers, and politicians collide. Longmire finds drama in a sheriff trying to keep order in a place where everybody has history. While it’s smaller in scale, it’s more affecting.
Skip This If: You need the operatic scale of Yellowstone. Longmire has shootouts, murders, betrayal, and plenty of danger. It doesn’t build every episode around a giant cliffhanger. Its pleasures come from the characters, the mysteries, and the slow-burn.
‘The Mandalorian’ (2019 – 2023)
Yes, It’s a Western, and Its Ending Actually Landed
Watch This If: Strip away the space setting, and Jon Favreau’s Star Wars series is a classic Western through and through. There’s a lone gunfighter with a moral code, a kid who needs protection, and a galaxy full of morally gray bounty hunters standing in for outlaws. What more does one need? The Mandalorian follows Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal), a bounty hunter who becomes Grogu’s reluctant protector, and the redemption arc across three tightly plotted seasons is complete and rewarding. Unlike Yellowstone, The Mandalorian ended on its own terms. Lucasfilm has confirmed the Disney+ series wrapped after Season 3, folding what would have been Season 4 into this year’s The Mandalorian and Grogu.
Skip This If: You want the grounded realism of Yellowstone. No one is going to mistake The Mandalorian for a contemporary ranch drama. The lore becomes increasingly complicated as the show connects with the wider Star Wars universe. if you came here specifically for horses and Montana, don’t take my “space Western” classification too literally.
‘Justified’ (2010 – 2015)
The Modern Western With the Best Dialogue on Television
FX
Watch This If: In Justified, Timothy Olyphant plays U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, a Kentucky-born lawman whose old-school approach to justice gets him sent back to his home state. There, he immediately runs into criminals, family baggage, and his former friend Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), who became one of television’s great villain-turned-something-else characters. The series aired for six seasons, and it won two Emmys and received eight nominations. What Justified does better than Yellowstone is dialogue. Elmore Leonard’s voice gives every scene a rhythm and dark humor that Sheridan’s self-serious scripts rarely attempt. People don’t simply threaten each other. They dance around threats, tell stories, make jokes, lie badly, and occasionally say something so perfectly phrased that you have to rewind the episode. It’s just that good.
Skip This If: You want the sprawling ranch politics of Yellowstone. Justified is a case-of-the-week crime show that is more focused on law enforcement and criminals. Since it has a specific sense of humor and is dialogue-heavy, it’s not for everyone.
‘Hell on Wheels’ (2011 – 2016)
The Western About Building America One Very Bad Decision at a Time
Watch This If: You like Yellowstone because it makes the American West feel like a place where money, land, violence, and ambition are always clashing. Hell on Wheels does the same, but is set during the 1860s and tells a story about the Union Pacific Railroad. Anson Mount stars as Cullen Bohannon, a former Confederate soldier who joins the railroad’s expansion while hunting the men who killed his family. What I really like about Hell on Wheels is how messy its version of the West feels. Yellowstone gives us a modern battle over who gets control of a piece of land; Hell on Wheels shows a country actively being built, bought, stolen, exploited, and fought over. The railroad brings opportunity, but it also brings violence, racism, greed, and corruption.
Skip This If: You want a contemporary setting. Hell on Wheels is a period piece, so if you like watching Western violence collide with iPhones and helicopters on Yellowstone, this one won’t scratch that same itch.
‘Godless’ (2017)
The Western Miniseries That Lets the Women Take Over
Watch This If: Written, directed, and created entirely by Scott Frank, Godless is a seven-episode Netflix miniseries that centers on La Belle, New Mexico, a town run by almost all women after a mining accident kills most of the men. The story kicks off as outlaw Frank Griffin, played by Jeff Daniels in an Emmy-winning turn, closes in on hunting his former protégé. Having watched it three times, I would happily put Godless ahead of Yellowstone because it knows how to make its female characters matter. Alice Fletcher isn’t waiting for Roy to save her ranch, Mary Agnes is busy building a life of her own, and the women of La Belle have already figured out how to survive before the gunmen arrive. The show also looks fantastic. Frank gave the landscapes an enormous scale and then used the emptiness to make the eventual violence even more explosive.
Skip This If: You want an ongoing story you can live with for years. Godless tells its entire story in one tight season with no plans for more. You won’t get the massive character ecosystem or endless rivalries that make Yellowstone a longer watch. It’s a weekend commitment at best.
‘1883’ (2021–2022)
The ‘Yellowstone’ Prequel Is Taylor Sheridan’s Best Western
Watch This If: While Sheridan wrote this one, 1883 does one thing that Yellowstone never figured out: it ends exactly when it should. Tim McGraw and Faith Hill play James and Margaret Dutton, who lead their family west on a brutal wagon-train journey alongside Sam Elliott’s world-weary Pinkerton agent, Shea Brennan. Sheridan designed the series as what he called a “ten-hour movie” rather than an open-ended series. That decision gave 1883 an emotional gut-punch of a finale that Yellowstone, still juggling spin-offs years after its own ending, never came close to matching.
Skip This If: Again, if you want a show that keeps going, 1883 is not for you. It was intended as a complete story with most of its characters gone by the finale. Anyone hoping for a second season will be disappointed since Sheridan said there isn’t one coming.
‘Deadwood’ (2004 – 2006)
The Western That Made Everything Else Look Basic
Watch This If: David Milch created Deadwood after winning his first Emmy writing “Trial by Fury” for Hill Street Blues in 1983. He brought the same density of language to a frontier South Dakota mining camp. He gave Ian McShane’s foul-mouthed saloon owner, Al Swearengen, line after line of the richest, most Shakespearean dialogue ever written for television. If I’m being completely honest, Deadwood is the best show on this list, regardless of how it compares to Yellowstone. Beneath all the brilliant writing, Milch builds an extraordinarily rich story about how societies form. Everyone wants something. Everyone has a price. Everyone is trying to work out whether civilization is worth the trouble. Every writer working in this genre, Sheridan included, works in Deadwood’s shadow.
Skip This If: You want a fast-moving, easy-to-follow Western. The dialogue in Deadwood is dense, the story is character-driven, and the show doesn’t stop to explain every political or personal relationship. If Yellowstone is your comfort food, Deadwood is the meal you actually have to sit down for and process after.
