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Netflix adds new series with major connection to Oscar-winning Western
Published 13:45 9 Jan 2025 GMT
Updated 17:10 16 Apr 2025 BST
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Critics are calling it a harrowing but powerful watch.
Netflix has just added a six-part series titled American Primeval that looks like a must-watch for Western fans.
Hailing from creator Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) and director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights), the show is described as a "dramatisation of the deadly clash between Natives, pioneers, Mormon soldiers, and the US government in 1857".
The plot synopsis from Netflix reads: "On a harsh American frontier, a mother and son search for safety, a newlywed vows to avenge his wife and a settler tightens his grip on what's his."
American Primeval also features several characters based on real-life people, including famed mountain man Jim Bridgers - who also appeared in The Revenant, played as a young man by Will Poulter.
Set 50 years after the events of The Revenant, with Bridgers now played by Shea Whigham, one could consider American Primeval a quasi-sequel to the Oscar-winning Western starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Alongside Whigham, the cast of the new Netflix show includes Betty Gilpin (The Hunt), Dane DeHaan (Oppenheimer), Kim Coates (Sons of Anarchy), Saura Lightfoot-Leon (The Agency), Shawnee Pourier (Dark Winds) and Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights).
Critics are already praising the show, noting that it makes for a harrowing if powerful watch.
You can read some of the positive write-ups for American Primeval below:
Financial Times: "The latest offering in TV’s recent Western renaissance, it feels darker and grittier than Taylor Sheridan’s soapy 'horse opera' Yellowstone and a world away from the romanticised West of the genre’s heyday."
Forbes: "The American frontier is as much a character here as any of the speaking parts, similar to The Revenant. And the attention to detail in the costumes and sets is extraordinary."
The Hollywood Reporter: "Boasting a strong ensemble of actors buried under period-appropriate layers of troweled-on grime and scruffiness, the show has an undeniable visceral impact and should find a Taylor Sheridan-primed audience willing to buy in."
Ready Steady Cut: "American Primeval is awful, but largely in a way that’s terrifically entertaining. It’s about a lot of horrible people doing a great many heinous things, and it contains, for the record, some of the most convincingly dirty fingernails I’ve ever seen on film."
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