1883 - Season 1

1883 is an American Western drama television miniseries created by Taylor Sheridan that premiered on December 19, 2021, on Paramount+. The series stars Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Sam Elliott, Isabel May, LaMonica Garrett, Marc Rissmann, Audie Rick, Eric Nelsen, and James Landry Hébert. The series is chronologically the first of several prequel series to Sheridan's Yellowstone and follows the story of how the Duttons came to own the land that would become the Yellowstone Ranch. It is also the second installment in the franchise. The series consists of ten episodes and concluded on February 27, 2022.[1][2][3]

1883 - Season 1

The show was initially presented as a limited series. In February 2022, Paramount announced that "additional episodes" would follow the first season.[23] It was later announced that in place of a second season, the series would be succeeded by the sequel show 1932, later renamed 1923.[24] Sheridan considers 1883 to be "a 10-hour movie with an ending",[25][26] equivalent to a limited series.

To introduce the new series 1883 to Yellowstone viewers, Tim McGraw and Faith Hill appeared as James and Margaret Dutton in flashback scenes during the fourth season of Yellowstone to show what life was like on the Dutton ranch in 1893, ten years after the Dutton family arrival in Montana. In the first episode, "Half the Money", James Dutton and his preteen sons John and Spencer, portrayed respectively by actors Jack Michael Doke and Charlie Stover, encountered starving Native Americans who had left the local reservation to bury their father on their former land that had since become a part of the Dutton Ranch.[31] In the eighth episode No Kindness for the Coward, Margaret Dutton and her sons John and Spencer are sitting at the dinner table in their ranch homestead waiting for her husband and their father to return from a dangerous manhunt of horse thieves who plague their territory.[32] These Yellowstone episodes aired prior to release of 1883 on Paramount+.

In February 2021, Taylor Sheridan signed a five-year deal with ViacomCBS and MTV Entertainment Group following the success of Yellowstone. Under the deal, he would create new series for both studios. One of these was a prequel to Yellowstone, set to be broadcast on Paramount+, initially called Y: 1883.[38] Sheridan said that he struggled with writer's block after selling the concept to Paramount+, but he managed to overcome it. While working on another series, Mayor of Kingstown, Sheridan noticed Isabel May auditioning for a role on that show. Focusing on the perspective of "what would happen if someone like May left polite society behind" Sheridan completed the 1883 pilot script in a week.[39]

On November 8, 2021, a first-look trailer for the series was released;[47] a full trailer was released on December 3.[48] The series made its TV premiere on December 25, 2021, on CMT. The first episode was run on Paramount Network, who ordered the show before they moved it to streaming on affiliated platform Paramount+ during its development, as part of promoting the show, like they did with Mayor of Kingstown. The series was released on Blu-ray and DVD under the title 1883: A Yellowstone Origin Story on August 30, 2022.[49]

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 89% based on 27 reviews with an average score of 7.5/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "1883 can feel too overdetermined to be a properly rough-hewn Western, but viewers will want to saddle up for Sam Elliott's commanding star turn."[50] Metacritic gave the series a weighted average score of 69 out of 100 based on 12 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[51]

Although I'm crushed after this one, the no-holds-barred approach 1883 is taking to telling the tale of settling this country is working. It's edge-of-your-seat stuff, and it's not accomplished through nonsense storylines or a fantastical bent.

The realities pioneers faced are enough to ratchet up the tension to uncomfortable levels without embellishing. Does 1883 give you a new appreciation for what we've accomplished in the last 139 years? It's awe-inspiring.

Whether it's finding love, grieving the loss of what's left behind, or forming new friendships, 1883 Season 1 Episode 6 shows that this experience will profoundly affect everyone whether they realize it or not.

And like Yellowstone, 1883 doesn't have its characters spending too much time on their woes. Stories move swiftly because the writers know that the quicker they move through plotlines, the more the characters will accomplish.

They're moving through territory very slowly, but at the mention of deserts and mountains ahead, it's fun to imagine how future seasons will unfold. There is so much terrain in the west as they move south to north, and the filming locations will have to change accordingly. 041b061a72