Stream It Or Skip It: ‘1923’ On Paramount+. Where Harrison Ford And Helen Mirren In A ‘Yellowstone’ Prequel Set In A Suffering Montana

The more shows Taylor Sheridan produces for Paramount+, the bigger the stars that get sucked into his circle of trust. Kevin Costner in Yellowstone, Jeremy Renner in Mayor of Kingstown, Sam Elliot in 1883, and Sylvester Stallone in Tulsa King. In his second Yellowstone prequel, 1923, Sheridan can now boast two of the biggest, decades-long stars we’ve got: Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. Will the show do its stars justice?

1923: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A man running through the woods, breathing heavily, holding a gun.

The Gist: As we see Cara Dutton (Helen Mirren) shooting what we’d imagine is someone trying to poach grazing land from her property — almost getting shot herself in the process — we hear a narration from who we presume is Elsa Dutton (Isabel May). It sets up where the Dutton family is in 1923, with Jacob Dutton (Harrison Ford) taking over the family business after his brother James died. He and Cara raised James’ sons as his own, and made James’ dream into an empire in Montana. “But the empire was crumbling,” Elsa says.

Montana is suffering in 1923: The state is suffering through an economic depression, prohibition is in full swing, and swarms of locusts are killing the grass that cattlemen like Jacob Dutton need to keep their livestock alive. As an officer with the Montana Livestock Association, he works with Sheriff William McDowell (Robert Patrick) to police grazing rights, and the immigrant sheep farmers in the area are starting to poach the grazing areas on the land of cattlemen like him.

He’d like to prevent a range war, but is afraid it might be too late for that. His solution to the grazing problem is to take all the major herds and push them up the mountain, where they’ll be in danger from wolves and bears, but at least there will be grass. That puts a crimp in the plans of one of his most loyal ranch hands: His great nephew Jack (Darren Mann), the son of Jacob’s nephew and right-hand man John Sr. (James Badge Dale). He’s set to get married to his fiancee Elizabeth Stratford (Michelle Randolph), herself the daughter of a major rancher, but that wedding will have to be delayed because of the cattle drive.

James Dutton’s other son, Spencer (Brandon Sklenar) is in Kenya, where he went after World War I ended; he still has flashbacks to the horrors he saw there, but it also gives him the courage to face down attacking lions and shoot them in the head. He’s brought to a luxury safari camp to hunt a leopard that’s been threatening the campers; he knows he has to use himself and his assistants as bait.

Meanwhile, in a Catholic school for Native Americans, a student named Teonna (Aminah Nieves) defies her teacher, Sister Mary (Jennifer Ehle), who beats her with a ruler, causing Teonna to start punching the nun. But when Mary brings her to the headmaster, Father Renaud (Sebastian Roché), the priest gives both of them corporal punishment. Teonna later takes a bath with blood dripping down the back of her legs.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Given that 1923 is written and produced by Taylor Sheridan as a prequel to Yellowstone and a sequel to 1883, we’ll cite those shows.

Our Take: Like 1883, 1923 suffers from Sheridan’s tendency to get indulgent about the Montana vistas that are the show’s backdrop. The 60-minute runtime could have been shaved down by at least 15 minutes and it would not have lost any story elements.

Unlike 1883, however, we’re not quite sure where the story of 1923 is going to go. Is it about just everything that Montana and the Duttons had to face in the early part of the 20th century? Is it going to focus on the range war? Where does Spencer and his ability to face down big cats factor in? And just what is going on with Teonna and that school for Native American girls?

Paramount+ only gave critics one episode for review, and we struggled to get through it for a bunch of reasons: The pacing was at a crawl, and trying to do the Dutton family tree in our heads proved to be difficult; we had to redraw that tree a couple of times, based on that initial narration and what we saw in the show notes. The side trips to the Native school and to Kenya were long and seemingly disconnected from the rest of the story. And, let’s face it: Unless ranchers and sheep farmers start shooting at each other, grazing rights isn’t a very scintillating topic to hang an epic drama on.

What was the biggest crime of the first episode is that it didn’t give us nearly enough of its two biggest drawing cards: Ford and Mirren. These two megastars are doing TV for the first time, for heaven’s sake, and we seem to get a whole lot more from the supporting cast than we get from the stars.

We get a few scenes where Ford monotones his way through some confrontations with the sheep farmers; Mirren is in the episode more, dispensing advice to Elizabeth and to John Sr.’s wife Emma (Marley Shelton), both anxious about their husbands being on this massive cattle drive. Even though the Dutton saga will attract the numerous Yellowstone fans out there, the Yellowstone agnostics like us are streaming the show in order to see Ford and Mirren play off the massive Montana scenery and each other. We hope we get more of that in the rest of the 16 episodes that will stream over two seasons.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: After a leopard attacks and Spencer shoots it dead, his assistants scream to him that there are two. He swings around with his rifle and sees one leaping towards him.

Sleeper Star: Jerome Flynn is Banner Creighton, who is the de facto leader of the sheep farmer group, and he leads the massive sheep herds as they trespass onto Dutton’s land.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Spencer guzzles coffee at dinner, one of the upper crust safari-goers asks him why. “I’m hunting the thing that’s hunting you,” Spencer replies. When the man asks what’s hunting them, he replies, “A leopard the size of a sofa.” A sofa?

Our Call: STREAM IT, if only for the presence of Ford and Mirren, and the fact that we know that Sheridan’s shows get better as they go along. But the first episode of 1923 does not do the presence of its stars justice, has disjointed stories and a glacial pace.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.