Dutton Ranch review: The Yellowstone story continues in this soapy spin-off

When is a Yellowstone spin-off not a Yellowstone spin-off? In recent months it’s been hard to keep track. Writer Taylor Sheridan made himself a star by overseeing five seasons of the original show, a saga following the Dutton ranching family in Montana. He followed that with the prequels 1883 and 1923, which introduced previous generations of Duttons. So far so straightforward.

This year, though, we’ve had Marshals, which features Luke Grimes reprising his Yellowstone character Kayce Dutton, and is set in Montana – but Kayce wasn’t a particularly interesting part of Yellowstone, and his spin-off is a rather silly action thriller/police procedural. It isn’t scripted by Taylor Sheridan, and you can tell. Then there’s The Madison, which is written by Sheridan and leans heavily on the Montana landscapes that were so important to Yellowstone, but which is about different characters altogether.

Now we come to Dutton Ranch, starring Kelly Reilly as Beth Dutton and Cole Hauser as her husband, Rip. These are key Yellowstone characters, continuing their story. And although the new show fails on two other criteria – the head writer is Chad Feehan, not Taylor Sheridan, and he relocates the action to Texas – this feels like the closest any of the spin-offs have come to repeating the old formula.

It’s a tale as old as the Montana hills that Beth and Rip wish they were still gazing out on. After a calamity at the old homestead – no spoilers, but there’s a cool shot of Rip riding a horse through fire – they buy a new ranch in a new state, near the town of Rio Paloma, an hour from the Mexican border. Wherever Duttons go, they want to be top of the heap, but this puts them into a potentially lethal conflict with the family who run a bigger ranch next door. Someone’s nose is about to be put out of joint, which will likely lead to shots being fired.

The looming battle is encapsulated by a face-off between the endlessly ornery Beth, a woman who could start a mass brawl in an empty bar – and one Beulah Jackson, played by Annette Bening in a rare TV role. Their first verbal showdown, a tense negotiation about slaughtering quotas, sets the tone. Neither is used to letting anyone have the last word, and neither Bening nor Reilly is willing to let another performer act them off the screen. It may well come down to who wears the biggest belt buckle with their straight blue jeans: Beth’s could certainly stun a cow, but Beulah’s looks like you could use it to weigh down a haystack tarp in a tornado. It’s a wonder they can stand up.

Beulah is the fearsome matriarch of her family, but there lies another yarn that’s been told many times before, because it’s a good one. She has two sons, one of whom is a drunken, druggy liability who is endlessly cut slack by his mom; the other is in charge of everyday operations and tries to do things properly, but can’t seem to do anything right.

By the end of the opening episode, the Dutton men – Rip and adopted son Carter (Finn Little) – have, thanks to their insistence on chinning strangers immediately if the other guy is in the wrong, entangled their family’s fate with that of the Jacksons, while Beth has befriended Everett (Ed Harris), a kindly old veterinarian who tends foals but doesn’t suffer fools.

The notes of epic drama that pushed Yellowstone up to blockbuster level aren’t quite visible in the spin-off, making Dutton Ranch more of a high-class soap. But the terse, homespun wisdom you’d expect if this were an authentic Sheridan joint is intact, near enough, as is a weakness for traditional gender roles that somehow manages not to be too patronising or toxic.

Reilly and Bening are in charge, and there’s something here for them to work with.

Dutton Ranch will air from Friday 15 May on Paramount+.

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