“The road west was paved with blood”, as the official trailer for 1883 warns us below. And who better to help us walk that path west than IRL Western legend Sam Elliott?
He and his fearsome stache star in 1883, a spin-off and prequel to the hugely popular series Yellowstone. Streaming now on Paramount+, season one of 1883 reveals the 19th century ancestors of the Dutton family in all their gun-slinging, saloon-draining, Oregon-trail-blazing majesty.
The entire first season is now available to watch exclusively on Paramount+ for Australian subscribers, which may be a tad annoying for Yellowstone fans who watch that series on Stan. The high production values and Wild West spectacle in the trailer below seem to be worth it, though, presenting a bloody and burnished vision of the cutthroat world Kevin Costner will police a few decades down the track.
“You can police yourselves, or ah can do it”, expedition leader Elliott declares to a nervous mob in one scene. Turns out it’s not so easy establishing any sense of law and order in lawless new territory—but what is the Dutton gang supposed to do? This is their Manifest Destiny, dadgummit!!
The moustachioed A Star Is Born star has elevated his status lately as a connoisseur of all things West, when he was one of the few vocal critics of Jane Campion’s Oscar-nominated Western The Power of the Dog. On Marc Maron’s podcast WTF, Elliott called the film a “piece of shit” for its homosexual subtext and Campion’s international authorship, saying, “what the f**k does this woman from down there know about the American West?”
He’s since walked back his comments, but still: you don’t wanna wrassle with Elliott when it comes to cowboy stories. Hopefully 1883 is a good one.
