Stream It or Skip It: ‘Ride’ on Hallmark Is the Cowboy Rodeo Soap You Didn’t Know You Needed

Hallmark’s new era continues with the premiere of Ride, the network’s brand new drama series starring Nancy Travis as the head of a ranch and the matriarch of a legendary family of bull riders. But when tragedy befalls the McMurray family, they must figure out a way to move forward — hopefully away from calamity and towards calm. But would there be a show if things weren’t a bit dramatic? I think not! The question is: is this a show you’ll want to stick with through thick and thin? Or will you change the channel after eight seconds?

RIDE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: What else? A sweeping aerial shot of the McMurray ranch located in gorgeous Colorado. Makes you wonder: since, like, every Hallmark Christmas movie is set in Colorado, what’re the odds we get some Ride/holiday movie crossover this year? Fingers crossed — !

The Gist: Nancy Travis plays Isabel McMurray, head of the McMurray ranch and mother of three sons and superstars of the rodeo scene. There’s eldest son Austin (Marcus Rosner), a well-respected bull rider with lots of endorsement deals that help keep the ranch going; Cash (Beau Mirchoff), who’s been deployed overseas for the last little bit; and Tuff (Jake Foy), a gay bullfighter who’s loyal to his family at home and in the arena. Isabel has a couple of surrogate daughters, including Austin’s wife Missy (Tiera Skovbye), a rodeo star in her own right; and the stoic-yet-warm ranch hand Valeria Galindo (Sara Garcia). That’s the McMurray family that we meet in the opening scene — before their lives are forever changed by one fatal ride.

SPOILER (although this is very much part of the entire show’s premise, so, is it?): After successfully hanging on for the required 8 seconds, Austin gets thrown from and killed by the bucking bull… in front of an arena of fans and his entire family. A year passes and the McMurray family is forever changed. The ranch is in foreclosure, Missy’s looking to move on from her in-laws, Valeria’s disappeared to take care of some shady business that Austin was secretly involved with, and Cash is aiming for rodeo superstardom (even though both his brother and father were killed while bull riding). Oh — and on top of all that, there is something brewing between Missy and Cash. That’s more than enough drama to get a show started, ain’t it?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? You’re gonna get the obvious comparisons to Yellowstone and the other modern shows set on a ranch, including Netflix’s The Ranch (which also starred Nancy Travis for a little while). But I think Ride has more in common with the southern soaps of Netflix, like Sweet Magnolias but with a bit of an edge.

Sex and Skin: This is usually a nonstarter with Hallmark, a network that gets a blanket TV-G rating. But Ride’s first episode feels a bit steamier than you’d expect, even though it never ventures further than a passionate kiss. I’m just saying, I fully expect Ride to deliver shirtless cowboy thirst traps and maybe — maybe — even a gay romance before Season 1 is over.

Parting Shot: While a lot of Episode 1 — which is cheekily titled “Legend of the Fall” — deals with Cash coming to terms with his grief, frustration, and duty to his family, the episode ends with Isabel pulling Missy and the estranged Valeria close and declaring that there’s nothing these three women can’t handle if they stick together. This is Nancy Travis’s show, and we love that.

Sleeper Star: Every primetime soap needs a villain, and Alexandra Beaton’s cowgirl socialite Janine is a pot-stirrer if ever I did see one. She only gets a couple scenes in the first episode, but lordy does she know how to push the McMurray family’s buttons. Is Janine a gay icon in the making? Maybe!

Most Pilot-y Line: The opening scene is a hurried and crowded breakfast at the ranch that tries to introduce you to pretty much the entire cast all at once. That leads to some dialogue doozies like, “Does that process include saying ‘thank you’ to your bull fighting little brother?”

Our Take: Let’s just say it: Ride is exactly the kind of show that I want from Hallmark. I don’t think I would trust another network to make a family drama set in the high-pressure world of ranches and rodeos that’s this compulsively watchable. That’s why comparisons to Yellowstone aren’t accurate even if the aesthetics are similar, and also why those comparisons undersell what Ride excels at: the drama.

Ride is an old school primetime soap, albeit one that’s got a bit of peak TV grit to it. Nancy Travis is the exact right person to anchor this series, and she brings a lot of emotional depth to every scene she’s in. The same goes for Mirchoff who practically steals the whole show as Cash. He’s a brooding cowboy with something to prove and the hots for his dead brother’s widow. You love to see it!

Thankfully Ride seems to realize that it’s airing on the same network that devotes nearly three months of the year to nonstop holiday cheer, and therefore it can’t take itself too seriously. There’s a level of camp that we expect and crave from Hallmark, and Ride delivers on that. When Missy hitches her fate on scoring a gig as a brand ambassador for Frontier Jeans, the way the entire town needs to see a McMurray ride a bull for 8 seconds or they’ll lose their minds, the fact that the gay brother is named Tuff and gets a full country western musical number at the town saloon? Like the late, great Nashville before it, Ride kept me on my toes the entire time.

Come to think of it, Ride is a bit like bull riding — and I say this as someone who learned everything he knows about rodeo culture from the first episode of Ride. This show is deadly serious yet simultaneously frivolous — and that push and pull makes it compelling. It’s dealing with some heavy stuff, like how a family picks up the pieces and pulls themselves together following an unspeakable tragedy. Remember how the episode starts with a mother watching her son die violently in an off-camera rodeo accident? But the thing that this family — nay, this community loves most is watching someone ride a bull for 8 seconds, and fingers crossed that person don’t get their skulls caved in by 1,500 pounds of stomping muscle. When you think about it like that, bull riding is one bizarre pass time.

The same goes for Ride. It’s high-stakes, yes, but it’s also silly as all get-out (just wait until you see the ad campaign this jeans company comes up with for poor Missy — !). And y’know what? I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Our Call: STREAM IT. I’m ready to care a whole lot about fictional rodeos.