David Harkin

This show is almost great. It has everything: stunning location, interesting characters, a resonance of the entire American story. Unfortunately it doesn’t quite get there. There are just too many impossibilities to overlook. The show attempts to present extremely serious events with moral seriousness. Unfortunately this is simply impossible with gunfights every episode.Don’t get me wrong, I love gunfights, but the death-toll is that of a bad day in Ukraine, and nobody seems to notice that Montana has bodies, bombs and automatic fire all over the place. It would bave been much better with one or two closely observed acts of violence. Equally silly is the rapidity with which the characters recover from gunshots and blast effects, not to mention knife wounds and concussions. But it is the fact that the show equivocates between the Duttons being a screwed up family of wealthy stock owners and some sort of ongoing criminal enterprise that makes the necessary engagement difficult to sustain.