This 10/10 Netflix Western Series Beat One of Taylor Sheridan’s Best Shows With 234M+ Hours Watched

When it comes to Western television, we've been in something of a renaissance over the past decade or so. With the rise of Yellowstone, more networks and streamers have been willing to greenlight horse operas that take place either in the traditional Old West or contemporary times, with plenty of great material to choose from. But if you're looking for a new miniseries to binge, and you've got Netflix, consider leaving Taylor Sheridan behind for something a bit more intense that has drawn in a much bigger audience. If you haven't yet had the chance to catch Mark L. Smith's American Primeval, let this be the signpost that points you in that direction.

Netflix's 'American Primeval' Has Successfully Overtaken '1883' on Streaming Charts

If you were asked which installment in Taylor Sheridan's Yellowstone Universe is the most beloved (and most watched), answers may vary. While the flagship Kevin Costner drama certainly has its audience, many would argue that 1923 is the best multi-season of the bunch. But as far as more traditional Western content goes, it's actually 1883 that's universally beloved as arguably Sheridan's most profound and engaging installment yet. Nevertheless, according to FlixPatrol, American Primeval beats out 1883 in viewership by a large margin. In fact, this Netflix original raked in over 230 million viewers in the last year alone, beating out Sheridan's 10-part 1883 miniseries, which only pulled in half those numbers since 2021.

While 1883 is an exceptional drama about westward expansion, following a group of covered wagon pioneers on the Oregon Trail, American Primeval is a more intense tale that features Taylor Kitsch, Betty Gilpin, Dane DeHaan, Derek Hinkey, Shea Whigham, and Kim Coates in some of their best roles yet. The miniseries is about half the length of Sheridan's Western epic — six episodes compared to 1883's ten. American Primeval remains a bingeworthy frontier tale that combines historical truths with a fictional narrative, blending the two as seamlessly as Sheridan ever could.

'American Primeval' Is a Violent Western Endeavor With a Huge Payoff

Directed by Peter Berg, American Primeval is about as violent, gritty, and harrowing as they come, following Sara Holloway (Gilpin) and her son as they escape into the West at the same time that ruthless Mormon pioneers — led by Coates' infamous LDS leader Brigham Young — have decided to remake the Utah Territory in their own image. Conflict between the LDS militia and the U.S. Army ensues as the former frame local Indian tribes as the true culprits behind the various massacres around the land. Having previously explored this territorial region when penning The Revenant, Mark L. Smith revisits this familiar landscape — and even the character of Jim Bridger, now played by Whigham as an older man — with fresh eyes as mountain man Isaac Reed (Kitsch) leads Sara and her son through the wild frontier.

American Primeval is not for the faint of heart. Sure, 1883 has its gnarly moments that turned some audiences off, but American Primeval pulls absolutely no punches when it comes to putting its characters through both hell and high water. The series begins by depicting the harrowing and truly horrific Mountain Meadows Massacre, a historical tragedy where the Mormon militia Nauvoo Legion disguise themselves as Native Americans and, with some help from local Paiutes, slaughter a group of 200 pioneers, some of them of their own ilk. It's a brutal sequence that rivals that opening scene from The Revenant, pushing the viewer further beyond anything Sheridan made us endure in 1883. That said, the massacre is essential in understanding the rest of the show, even if we wish it had been toned down just a bit for our own sake.

Netflix's 'American Primeval' Alters History, Which Makes the Western a Bit More Interesting

There's a lot of great material here to sift through, especially if you're looking for a miniseries that really pushes the buttons of what a Western should be and what it can do. Like Sheridan before him, Smith isn't shy when it comes to rewriting certain historical elements to better fit the narrative, with an ending to the rivalry between Bridger and Young that stands in stark contrast to how things actually played out in the real world. Still, the inclusion of fictional characters like Isaac and Sara (who are a much better pair than anyone in 1883, even if their love story is a bit more tragic) round out American Primeval as strict historical fiction, adding interesting layers of commentary on both the time period and the genre itself. If you're looking for traditional lawmen, rough-but-honorable cowboys, and clear black hats, that's not at all what American Primeval is, but it's the show's moral complexity that makes it stand out as something truly unique.

In the end, whether you give American Primeval a go or prefer to stick with 1883, it's certainly a win that we're getting more Western stories like this on mainstream platforms. Netflix certainly has a history of greenlighting this sort of genre content, with Godless being one of note from 2017, as well as the final few seasons of Longmire. Likewise, because of Sheridan's influence, Paramount+ is no stranger to these sorts of tales either, between the greater Yellowstone Universe and even Lawmen: Bass Reeves. Fans of the Western are certainly eating good these days, and we can only hope that just maybe we'll see another American Primeval installment at some point in the future.

American Primeval is available for streaming on Netflix.