Taylor Sheridan’s new Yellowstone spinoff, 1923, brings Harrison Ford to his first big TV show, but the real star might be Helen Mirren, who plays Cara.
A good character introduction is one of the greatest weapons in a TV show’s arsenal. It’s the fastest way to turn viewers into ride-or-dies, because it’s easy to forgive a lot if a show introduces you to someone you find incredibly cool (this is why I and many other grown-ass adults still love Dragon Ball). 1923, the second Yellowstone prequel series after last year’s 1883, has a lot going for it in this regard. It stars Harrison Ford, for one — the easiest way to get boomers and their families to stop what they’re doing and pay attention. And it also helps that creator Taylor Sheridan is pretty good at introducing cowboys, as 1923’s predecessors excel at memorable openings built around their leading men.
1923 is not. Instead, it builds its splashy arrival around its leading woman.
Helen Mirren is 1923’s other big gun, a legendary actor on par with Ford that will both resonate with older viewers and be appreciated by younger ones — a shrewd power play by one of the most popular TV franchises on television right now. She is also, unfortunately, the only bright spot in the premiere, a quiet force of nature who watches men talk about doing things while she goes to get them done; 1923’s first scene shows her, as matriarch Cara Dutton, confronting and killing a presumed thief. It’s an act of violence that, crucially, no one sees — because when men are watching, Cara will have to act in more subtle ways.
In its runaway success, Yellowstone has become a franchise about the Dutton family, chronicling the powerful Montana ranchers and their various conflicts with those around them. Thus far its spinoffs each focus on a different generation of Duttons — 1883 followed James Dutton (Tim McGraw), the first Dutton patriarch to settle in Montana and establish the Yellowstone Ranch the franchise is named after.
