Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The McBee Dynasty: Real American Cowboys’ On Peacock, A Reality Series That’s Like A Real Life ‘Yellowstone’

The McBee Dynasty: Real American Cowboys is a reality series about Steve McBee, who owns McBee Farm and Cattle in Gallatin, Missouri, and how he runs it with his four sons: Steven Jr., Jesse, Cole and Brayden. McBee Farm and Cattle is poised to become a billion-dollar business — it’s such a big property that we see Steven Jr. and Cole overseeing the crops and cattle in a helicopter. But it’s also loaded with debt, and with the business engaging with a New York venture capitalist, Steve not only has to deal with the financial burden, but infighting amongst his sons and some personal issues that might get in the way of the ranch making its way out of the financial hole.

THE MCBEE DYNASTY: REAL AMERICAN COWBOYS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Clouds during sunrise. An American flag. A cow waking up from a nap. Then a hangar door opens and a helicopter is pulled out.

The Gist: Steve McBee literally started from nothing and built McBee Farm and Cattle into the huge corporation it is today, and he wants to leave the ranch and the business to his sons in good shape. But he’s accumulated debt while growing the business, including opening a car wash/cafe to bring in more steady income. That, paired with some low-yield growing seasons, have really left the business at a vulnerable point.

We encounter the brothers as Steven Jr., whom you might recognize from his stint as one of the “millionaires” in Joe Millionaire: For Richer Or Poorer, comes to a field late after he picks up Calah, whom he met on the reality dating series and is still in an on-again, off-again relationship. Steven is the CEO of the ranch, has an MBA and is the more business-minded of the group, but he insists he can pitch in and do the hard labor when needed. The task is to do a controlled burn of a growing field to get it ready for the next planting season. As the brothers bicker, the fire starts to take a turn and threatens to get out of control, until they manage to wrangle it back to where it needs to be.

Steve, knowing how many insurance claims they’ve made this year alone, gives his sons a gentle warning to make sure they are more careful during those controlled burns. But there are more things that Steve has to worry about. Apparently, the McBee family isn’t well liked around Gallatin, and they seem to get vandalized or have equipment stolen all the time.

When a truck and a mower, worth around $100,000, gets brazenly stolen right off the ranch’s property one night, he and his sons go around to neighboring ranches on a lead that was gathered from their CCTV footage. But when that goes nowhere, Steve decides that, given the tenuous insurance situation, he’s going to have to write off the loss, which makes him more concerned about taking care of his over 200 employees than anything else.

On top of this, Steve and the boys’ mother recently got divorced after his long cheating history caught up with him. He’s relying on his CFO, Galyna, to land the $100 million of venture capital that will help the ranch pay off its debts and grow into that billion dollar business. But he’s also been in a romantic relationship with her for some time, and he refuses to be exclusive.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? It’s not a stretch to call The McBee Dynasty: Real American Cowboys a real-life version of Yellowstone.

Our Take: Things seem to escalate pretty quickly by the end of the first episode of The McBee Dynasty. At first, we just see Steve and his sons doing ranching stuff, like herding cattle. Even the controlled burn scene was more of a visually interesting way to show the brothers bickering than anything dramatic. Even a scene where Calah and the other McBee sons’ WAGs sit and talk about their relationships while the men watch them from the house and worry that their women are trash-taking about them looks like some pretty standard stuff.

But then we get into the ranch’s debts, Steve’s divorce and his relationship with Galyna. And then we see why exactly the McBees are an interesting family to follow. Yes, it’s typical reality show drama. But what’s more interesting to us is that the subject of this drama this time around is a group of men.

There’s certainly going to be a lot of jostling among Steve’s sons, trying to demonstrate to him which one of them will be the best person to run the ranch once he retires. But, given that the ranch is teetering on financial ruin, and Steve is in a situationship with the one person he’s most dependent on to get the venture capital finalized, it certainly looks like he’s amping the risk factor up to about eleven.

Not sure how many viewers will catch this reference, but Steve admits he slept with Galyna a month after they met. She’s been working for McBee for six years, but he’s only been divorced for a year and a half. Yup, we did that math, too. And because she almost literally has him by the financial cahones, we’re pretty sure that Steve and Galyna’s relationship isn’t sitting well with Steven Jr. and the other sons.

Combine Steve’s romantic entanglements, the ranch’s teetering finances, the bickering sons and their relatively immature views of romantic relationships, and the fact that people constantly are driving onto their property and stealing things, and you certainly have a formula for an interesting reality show.

Sex and Skin: Steven Jr. and Calah have some shirtless fun upon her arrival to the ranch, but not much is shown.

Parting Shot: Steve tells his boys about the venture capital deal and the massive risk they are taking if they can’t return the VC’s investment.

Sleeper Star: We actually want to see a reality series about Galyna, who came to the U.S. from Russia as a self-described “mail order bride” and somehow ended up as the ranch’s CFO and McBee’s sometimes girlfriend.

Most Pilot-y Line: The scene where the boys are watching their WAGs talk and wondering what they’re saying about them is so retrograde, but we guess that might be par for the course for emotionally immature guys like the McBees.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The McBee Dynasty: Real American Cowboys turns the reality genre on its head, mainly because it concentrates on a group of rugged straight white dudes. The bickering and arguments we’re going to see will be refreshing because they’ll be about a whole bunch of different ridiculous reasons than you might see on a Real Housewives season or other female-centric reality series, and that’s all you really want on one of these kinds of shows, right?

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.