MMost TV writers would love to be Taylor Sheridan. Some may claim they are not fans – they may even be snobbish about his work, claiming it is vulgar and overly popular with American conservatives – but many yearn for the status he now enjoys: he is more famous than his shows. What is Landman? It’s the new Taylor Sheridan.

And it’s very Taylor Sheridan. His dramas usually focus on tough but wise men, who deal briefly but wisely with problems where violence and death are not far away. In Sheridan’s breakthrough, Yellowstone, Kevin Costner is a Montana rancher who fights to preserve ancient traditions that cause him endless battles, which he nobly carries. In Mayor of Kingstown, Jeremy Renner is a fixer who plays all sides in a Michigan prison town to prevent a full-scale war between the criminal gangs, cops and inmates. In the relatively carefree Tulsa King, Sylvester Stallone’s New York gangster introduces naive Oklahomans to the bitter reality of organized crime.

Landman fits this bill, playing Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy Norris, the on-site supervisor of an oil drilling operation in the Permian Basin of West Texas. It’s set more or less in the present day – the Permian oil rush is a real phenomenon that happened about eight years ago – but is still the story of a man holding together a dying way of life despite the inherent dangers of it, and in the face of interference from Sheridan’s regular villains: criminals, bureaucrats, pesky youth and the law. The oil country, especially when you’re so close to the Mexican border, is a semi-lawless place where astute common sense and a ruthless streak count for more than a college degree.

What really matters, though, is the ability to knock down a zinger. Sheridan is a skilled playwright, but his true calling is that of an epigrammatist, and in Landman he lets himself be quite out of line. Almost everything Tommy – “a divorced alcoholic with $500,000 in debt, and I’m one of the lucky ones” – says is quotable, as he metaphorically and sometimes literally fights fires in an industry where “there are two kinds of people: dreamers and losers ”. The spirit of escalier is not one of his inconveniences.

So what fires is Tommy fighting? There are not one but two explosive catastrophes in the first episode, which means he and his boss – Jon Hamm as the gruff plutocrat Monty Miller, sharply suited and with a flash of anger leaking down his aviator glasses – have a long to- have a to-do list. Butts must be covered. Rules must be bent.

However, Tommy’s biggest concern is his family. His spoiled, troubled daughter Ainsley (Michelle Randolph) is in town, causing chaos among Dad’s roommates – middle-aged oilmen even sloppier and more cynical than Tommy – by strutting around in her underpants. Meanwhile, Tommy’s ex-wife Angela (Ali Lartner) video calls him regularly, ostensibly to check on her children – they also have a son, Cooper (Jacob Lofland), a sleek black sheep who insists on working as a rough-and-tumble dick. in one of Tommy’s shifts, despite being clearly unsuited for manual labor, but really for engaging in flirty love-hate talk with Tommy. Despite leaving him for a man Tommy describes as “a fat cash machine,” she’s on his phone, taking a break from her latest poolside vacation to stick her chest up to the lens and taunt him about what he lost. Tommy is impassive: “Enjoy the beach,” he says, before hanging up. ‘Your tits look great. Make sure you don’t get syphilis.”

You’ll understand that Landman’s portrayal of his women… well, it’s what some of the target audience might describe as an innocent throwback to a time before ordinary, lowly grafting men were castrated through deceit, but it often comes across as a overly horny fantasy. , aimed at men who know the world has passed them by. When Rebecca Savage (Kayla Wallace) arrives—a big-city ballbreaker lawyer who carries her purse in the crook of her elbow—she gets into an argument with Tommy during their first meeting, when she objects to her being “the lady’ is called. a beam. “Oh, did I guess wrong?” says Tommy, sensing another rhetorical victory. “I’m so sorry, sir! And hats off to the plastic surgeon!”

Renewable energy, the anti-smoking lobby and picky doctors get the kicks too, but as usual with a Sheridan creation, the old-school values ​​have an underdog morality at their core that makes it hard to hate Tommy and Landman. “If the hammer hits the nail, the hammer wins,” is another of Tommy’s doozies – he’s referring to himself after an accident at work that left him without a fingertip, but he could be talking about the hard, dirty oil game, where the rich go wild and the little people risk their lives. That world is starkly evoked and it is clear which side Tommy is on. For a purveyor of raw sermons like Taylor Sheridan, oil is a rich new fuel.