Taylor Sheridan has a new show that’s dominating Paramount+’s streaming charts, and it’s so good that it makes even Yellowstone look small in comparison. Taylor Sheridan is responsible for some of the best shows on Paramount+, from the Yellowstone prequels 1883 and 1923 to standalone series like Landman. He’s been a dominating force for the streamer, and his new shows routinely top Paramount+’s streaming charts.
Sheridan’s latest returning show, the military thriller Lioness season 3, is no different. Lioness season 3 has been getting great reviews, it’s the most popular show on Paramount+ right now (via Collider), and it has already been renewed for a fourth season. While dominating Paramount+’s viewership charts is nothing new for Sheridan, Lioness is still something unique for the screenwriter.
Even with all of his recent success, Yellowstone has long been Taylor Sheridan’s most ubiquitous show. It was a flagship for both CBS and Peacock, it commanded a huge following, and even its most recent spinoffs — Marshals and Dutton Ranch — have been major hits as well. Lioness, however, has some things that Yellowstone could never offer, and it actually manages to make the earlier show feel small in comparison.
Taylor Sheridan’s Lioness Has A Much Bigger Scope Than Yellowstone
By virtue of its genre, Lioness simply has a much bigger scope and scale than Yellowstone does. Yellowstone and its spinoffs tell a generational, sweeping story about the Dutton family dynasty and their centuries-long fight to protect their land. It’s fairly large in scale, but at the end of the day, the entire franchise is about one family and one admittedly huge parcel of land. Even as John Dutton III dips into politics and law enforcement, Yellowstone is still a very personal story.
Lioness, on the other hand, blows that premise out of the water. Joe routinely goes on globe-trotting military missions, including to Syria, Spain, Mexico, and Ukraine. The show’s political intrigue also taps into geopolitics at large, from Middle Eastern power brokers to Latin American cartels to China and Russia’s influence on the world and the highest levels of the CIA and the United States.
Yellowstone is a story about a family vying for control of their land; Lioness is a story about global superpowers vying for political power with Joe and her QRF team being either used as weapons or being caught in the crossfire. It’s a winding, unpredictable show filled with twists, hidden agendas, secret plans, massive forces, political intrigue, and more along the lines of Jack Ryan or James Bond. Yellowstone simply can’t compete with Lioness‘ massive scale.
Even with its huge scope, Lioness also manages to feel more personal than Yellowstone. A huge throughline of the entire show, the thing that grounds Lioness in the midst of its global politics, is Joe and her family. At its core, Lioness is a story about a woman whose work drives a wedge in her personal life and tears her family apart, but it’s too important to abandon. Lioness confronts these ideas much more directly than Yellowstone confronted its ideas of a family strained by an intense and overworked patriarch, which makes it both bigger and more intimate.
Lioness May Have Taylor Sheridan’s Best Cast
Lioness may also boast the single best cast Taylor Sheridan has ever assembled, which is really saying something. One of the hallmarks of Sheridan’s movies and shows is how many A-list celebrity actors he gets on board. Yellowstone had Kevin Costner, Landman had Billy Bob Thornton, Demi Moore, Jon Hamm, and more, and the list only goes on from there. Almost every project Sheridan has worked on featured some of the greatest acting talents active in Hollywood.
Even with such stiff competition, Lioness may have the best cast of the bunch. Zoe Saldaña, Nicole Kidman, and Morgan Freeman are the biggest names in the show, and they’re all tremendous in their roles. Lioness‘ supporting cast, as well, features less prominent but equally skilled actors like Michael Kelly, Genesis Rodriguez, and a familiar face in Sheridan’s list of recurring actors, James Jordan, among many others.
As previously mentioned, almost all of Sheridan’s shows have great casts. What sets Lioness apart is how well they all work together. There’s standout performances to be sure, but even big names like Saldaña and Kidman disappear into their roles as they butt heads and vie for control. Every actor feels like they’re contributing to a story that’s bigger than themselves and intricately interconnected, while some of Sheridan’s other shows can come across as a few separate stories that are only loosely related. Lioness feels more cohesive, and it asks more of its actors only for them to completely deliver.
- Release Date
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July 23, 2023
- Network
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Paramount+
- Showrunner
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Taylor Sheridan
- Directors
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John Hillcoat, Anthony Byrne, Paul Cameron, Stephen Kay, Taylor Sheridan
- Writers
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Taylor Sheridan, Jill Wagner
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Laysla De Oliveira
Cruz Manuelos
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