Critics are calling it a harrowing but powerful watch.
Netflix has just added a six-part series titled American Primeval that looks like a must-watch for Western fans.
Hailing from creator Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) and director Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights), the show is described as a “dramatisation of the deadly clash between Natives, pioneers, Mormon soldiers, and the US government in 1857”.
The plot synopsis from Netflix reads: “On a harsh American frontier, a mother and son search for safety, a newlywed vows to avenge his wife and a settler tightens his grip on what’s his.”
American Primeval also features several characters based on real-life people, including famed mountain man Jim Bridgers – who also appeared in The Revenant, played as a young man by Will Poulter.
Set 50 years after the events of The Revenant, with Bridgers now played by Shea Whigham, one could consider American Primeval a quasi-sequel to the Oscar-winning Western starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
Alongside Whigham, the cast of the new Netflix show includes Betty Gilpin (The Hunt), Dane DeHaan (Oppenheimer), Kim Coates (Sons of Anarchy), Saura Lightfoot-Leon (The Agency), Shawnee Pourier (Dark Winds) and Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights).
Critics are already praising the show, noting that it makes for a harrowing if powerful watch.
Since its premiere, the show has been met with a positive reception from Netflix viewers, and is rocketing up the site’s most-watched charts.
You can read some of the positive write-ups for American Primeval below:
Financial Times: “The latest offering in TV’s recent Western renaissance, it feels darker and grittier than Taylor Sheridan’s soapy ‘horse opera’ Yellowstone and a world away from the romanticised West of the genre’s heyday.”
Forbes: “The American frontier is as much a character here as any of the speaking parts, similar to The Revenant. And the attention to detail in the costumes and sets is extraordinary.”
The Hollywood Reporter: “Boasting a strong ensemble of actors buried under period-appropriate layers of troweled-on grime and scruffiness, the show has an undeniable visceral impact and should find a Taylor Sheridan-primed audience willing to buy in.”
Ready Steady Cut: “American Primeval is awful, but largely in a way that’s terrifically entertaining. It’s about a lot of horrible people doing a great many heinous things, and it contains, for the record, some of the most convincingly dirty fingernails I’ve ever seen on film.”
How to watch American Primeval
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American Primeval is available to stream on Netflix now in its entirety.
If you want to watch it but want to save the cash, you could use this technique with an Amazon Fire Stick to save money.
The trick is something called ‘leapfrogging’, which is a way to skip between shorter, cheaper subscriptions to watch what you want to watch without signing up for expensive year-long contracts.
For example, you can get a basic Netflix package for £6.99, and stream what you want to watch via your Fire Stick and cancel it before your next bill.
You can then take advantage of the free trials of other services without signing up for them, all from the same place on your Fire Stick, so it’s super easy and convenient!
