How TV brought the Western into the 21st century

In the new Paramount Network series “Yellowstone,” the Dutton family owns the largest contiguous ranch in the United States.

They monitor their Montana territory on horseback and in helicopters. They wear cowboy hats and business suits. They seek justice through court orders and by the pistols holstered around their waists.

Created by Taylor Sheridan, “Yellowstone” is the latest play on the Western from a screenwriter and director who specializes in 21st-century twists on the genre. His scripts for “Sicario,” “Hell or High Water” and “Wind River,” are all about lawmen and outlaws squaring off in an unsettled expanse, whether they're cartels infiltrating the Mexican border, bank robbers peeling through West Texas or government agents seeking a killer on an Indian reservation. A Texas native who resides in Wyoming, Sheridan is uniquely attuned to how Western values seep into present, especially in the prairies he's called home.

While the Western has been left for dead by Hollywood movie studios, neo-Westerns such as ”Yellowstone,” which stars Kevin Costner, are finding a home on television. No matter whether these shows are set in the past, such as the Netflix limited series “Godless,” or the future, such as the HBO mind-bender “Westworld,” Western themes of identity, enterprise, power and violence are made newly relevant.

“The overarching conflicts that Westerns have explored since the '30s still exist today in those regions,” Sheridan said. “You still have massive land developers doing everything they can to buy out ranches and develop them. You still have the consequences of settlement in that region to Native Americans. You have issues with government and oversight, and an influx of people into an area that continually change it. You have a small population that's trying very hard to resist change. All of those themes exist today, and they're worthy of exploration.”

Sheridan wants “Yellowstone” to reflect a culture and a mindset that city dwellers have trouble fathoming. He insists the show is apolitical, but it's insightful about life outside the reach of government, where neighbors rely on each other to solve problems — and, occasionally, settle explosive disputes. For the Duttons, that means defending their territory and administering justice, because no one else is around to do it.

“There was a writer named Gretel Ehrlich who said that once you own land, you stop walking it and you start patrolling it,” Sheridan said. “There's a real truth to that.”

Although Westerns are known to operate with the moral simplicity of Black Hats and White Hats, the current wave of TV neo-Westerns works in shades of gray. Both Sheridan and “Godless” writer Scott Frank cite Clint Eastwood's “Unforgiven” as a touchstone for their shows.

“Sometimes a person has to go back to the worst of themselves in order to do a good thing,” Frank said. “and ‘Unforgiven' is a classic example of that. Even the best of us are conflicted and tormented, and the Western is a natural vehicle for that.”

“Godless” was originally conceived as a feature film in 2004, but Frank couldn't get it financed. He was told the Western “didn't travel,” which means it doesn't play well overseas, and it wasn't until his producer, Steven Soderbergh, started experimenting in television that he was encouraged to expand the concept into a 7½-hour series for Netflix.

“Godless” embraces the tropes of both a rollicking '50s Western and the darkly philosophical anti-Westerns of the late '60s and early '70s, but with the feminist twist of an 1880s mining town run entirely by women widowed by a silver-mine collapse.

“What's happening with Netflix and the other streaming services,” Frank said, “is that they're swallowing up a lot of genres that have been forgotten by movies — not just the Western, but any genre for adults. The movies are largely real estate now for superheroes or really broad comedies and action extravaganzas.”

Jonathan Nolan co-created “Westworld” with his wife, Lisa Joy. In re-imagining Michael Crichton's 1973 sci-fi shoot-'em-up about an Old West theme park populated by malfunctioning robot “hosts,” they engage in the dark fantasy of wealthy guests in a lawless playground of sex and violence.

For Nolan, the show has been a natural opportunity to examine the Western from the inside out. Westerns “are filled with transgression and sin and betrayal, because that's what we like to watch. It's a common thread of all of our stories. And the question is why. Why is there so much commonality in the stories that we tell? What do they say about us? What do they say about the human condition, that we like these stories so much?”