Looking back, it’s strange that Billy Bob Thornton first rose to fame with the 1996 Oscar-winning indie film. Slingblada film in which his character mainly communicates in grunts. Thornton is one of the best talkers of all time on the big and small screen, adept at delivering a line of banter that is simultaneously amusing and fascinating. It’s a skill he puts to great use as the star of writer-producer Taylor Sheridan’s new Paramount+ series Husbandman. As an oil company fixer named Tommy Norris – the kind of decisive, dirty-handed field worker who greases palms and puts out fires – Thornton never misses an opportunity to riff. In a voice somewhere between a grumpy growl and a relaxed tone – and in colorfully profane terms – Tommy tells everyone within earshot what he knows to be true, whether they like it or not.

All of this makes Tommy Norris a lineage of Sheridan protagonists who claim to see clearly the inevitable doom of our world, yet are determined to do whatever it takes to protect their part of it. He has a lot in common with Dwight Manfredi Tulsa KingJoe in LionessMike McClusky in Mayor of Kingstown and – the progenitor of them all – John Dutton III Yellowstone.

The big difference? Tommy is a better choice. He’s much, much funnier. That’s impossible to say Husbandman is a comedy. Co-created by Sheridan and Christian Wallace, and based on the podcast hosted by Wallace Boomtownon the messiness of the oil game in Texas’ Permian Basin –Husbandman is closely aligned with Sheridan’s other shows, which combine soap operas and crime dramas with earthly observations about The State Of Things.

Thornton stars alongside Jon Hamm, who plays Monty Miller, the boss of M-Tex, Tommy’s employer. The two go back decades together in the oil sector, having experienced several booms and busts. (The 2020 pandemic recession nearly wiped them out, turning their Midland, Texas, home base into a ghost town, we’re told.) Whenever Tommy isn’t lecturing someone on the realities of oil, Monty steps in to more or less same points.

But they never do it in the same scene – at least not in the five Husbandman episodes provided to critics by Paramount+. Hamm and Thornton initially communicate only by telephone. The fifth episode ends with the promise of a personal meeting; but before that, the two main characters of this show are isolated in their own storylines. And actually, it’s a stretch to call Monty’s scattered scenes a “story.” Demi Moore plays his wife Cami, but so far she barely appears, only popping up to remind her husband to take his heart pills. That’s the extent of the plot directly involving the Millers so far: Monty has health problems.

To be fair, Monty is also managing – remotely, through the cell – the same crises that concern Tommy. In Husbandman’In the film’s first episode, a drug cartel steals an M-Tex plane and lands it on a private road as part of their smuggling operation; and then a big truck drives by, causing a fatal accident that also destroys millions of dollars worth of dope. The bloody mess leads to a federal investigation, a lawsuit and antitrust threats. M-Tex’s problems intensify with a well explosion, witnessed by Cooper Norris (Jacob Lofland), Tommy’s son, who tries to follow in his father’s rugged footsteps.

As for the women in this show, aside from the barely appearing Cami Miller, there are four main female characters, each more or less falling into one of Sheridan’s usual types. Ali Larter has the showiest role as Tommy’s ex-wife, Angela, a larger-than-life sensualist who left him for a billionaire during one of the arrests but now wants back in his life. Michelle Randolph plays their teenage daughter, Ainsley, who shares her mother’s penchant for skimpy outfits and self-centered choices, and repeatedly fails to read the room. Sheridan seems to love these kinds of broadly drawn female characters: forces of nature that drive the men in their lives crazy – and not always with desire.

Kayla Wallace comes to the other end of the spectrum as Rebecca Savage, a young but ruthless lawyer who hates the environmental damage and institutional chauvinism of the oil industry and is as outspoken about her position as Tommy is about his – only with less sense of humor. Then there’s Ariana (Paulina Chávez), the widow of a Mexican-American roughneck, who bonds with Cooper and leans on him when her friends and family in the community aren’t around.

Anyone who has seen more than a few episodes of Yellowstone will probably recognize bits by Beth, Monica, Summer, Mia, and Laramie from that show: all those Taylor Sheridan women who tend to end up in slots labeled “steely,” “wild” or “bruised.” They’ll also likely recognize Sheridan’s signature story pacing Husbandmanwhere nothing much happens for the better part of an hour, until suddenly something shocking or violent (or both) happens.

In fact, there are times when Husbandman hardly feels like a television series and more like an opinion piece peppered with the occasional explosion. That it’s also quite easy to watch is a testament to Sheridan’s ability to capture the audience’s attention. His shows always start with a strong hook and a lot of promise.

On that promising side: Husbandman is the most overtly Texas-bound show since then Friday evening lights. (That connection is reinforced by Andrew Lockington’s score, which sounds a lot like Explosions In The Sky and WG Snuffy Walden.) Sherdian, who wrote each of the first five episodes and directed the first two, has long had an eye for the unique qualities of remote American spaces, whether in Montana or Oklahoma or the fictional town of Rustbelt Mayor of Kingstown. He finds a few of those funky locations here, like a coffee kiosk staffed by bikini-clad baristas, catering to all the oil workers who are up before sunrise, and the combination restaurant and bar that only has breakfast and dinner menus because “lunch” isn’t really a thing in the Permian oil field.

Husbandman is also filled with fascinating details about the oil sector, which attracts the kind of people who are willing (or have no choice but to) work around the clock, accept that a fatal accident may occur on any given day, and pack up and leave when times are getting lean. Even Tommy, who has lived in the basin for decades, describes it as “not at home” and behaves accordingly – including sharing a rental house with other M-Tex employees.

But the most important reason to watch Husbandman is Thornton. He brings real spice to speeches that shouldn’t be as entertaining as they are: whiny rants about clean energy zealots, sex workers, anti-smoking regulations, red tape, predatory bankers and whatever else is under his skin at the government. moment. Tommy is annoying, but he’s also easy to root for, as he constantly drops wry quips, he stands up for M-Tex employees, and he uses Big Oil’s intransigence as a pretext to bring down hypocrites and sleazebags.

Even the first time we meet Tommy, Thornton’s performance is riveting. In HusbandmanIn the opening scene, he’s tied up in a cartel hideout, laying out the lease terms the drug lords will have to accept unless they want their territory overrun with Halliburton mercenaries and DEA agents. Thornton has a bag on his head at the time; but he still has that that voiceweathered yet pleasantly lilting. Sometimes that’s enough.

Husbandman premieres November 17 on Paramount+