"I am the opposite of progress. I'm the wall it bashes against and I will not be the one who breaks." The entire show of Yellowstone is summed up in this pithy line from its main character John Dutton (played by Kevin Costner) in the show's fourth season, as he campaigns for governor of Montana with a lapidary slogan: "For the land." Very popular in fly-over states (the states you fly over, between New York and Los Angeles, without ever stopping), the series created in 2018 by Taylor Sheridan for Paramount was long seen as appealing to a Republican audience, one that watches Fox News rather than HBO. Six years later, Sheridan has become the "in-house" showrunner for Paramount and its streaming platform, on which Yellowstone spin-offs and other series whose content and form align particularly well with Trumpism are proliferating.

Yellowstone is a bit like Succession in the Wild West. It features the central figure of the ruthless patriarch and the same questions that plague every clan leader: who to pass the reins of the ranch to when he dies and, until then, how to defend his land against adversity. His enemies are mainly real estate developers and Silicon Valley investors, ready to throw millions of dollars at building a ski resort, a dam or even an airport on private land the size of a small country. To the codes of the Western – horses, cattle, self-managed open spaces, patriarchy, rivalry with the Indians – Yellowstone adds those of soap opera and family tragedy. A large part of the plot is devoted to the relationship between John, widowed years ago, and his four children, none of whom he is entirely satisfied by.

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