Yellowstone is still the most popular show you’ve never seen or heard of

The season premiere of Taylor Sheridan’s Kevin Costner vehicle drew some of the biggest audiences since 2018

By Matt Schimkowitz  |  November 9, 2021 | 2:25am
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Yellowstone is still the most popular show you’ve never seen or heard of
Steven Williams, Keith Cox, Wes Bentley, Kelly Reilly, Gil Birmingham, Kevin Costner, Cole Hauser, Kelsey Chow, Luke Grimes, Kent Alterman, and Sarah Levy Photo: Frazer Harrison (Getty Images for Paramount Network)

Yellowstone, the show that your parents can’t stop recommending to you (along with Ray Donovan, Goliath, and The Kominsky Method), drew massive numbers for its season premiere on Sunday night. The show that’s making The Paramount Network “the place to be” reportedly brought in 8 million viewers in “Live+Same Day” tallies, becoming the most-watched cable telecast since a 2018 episode of The Walking Dead, reports Deadline.

The show continues to grow in popularity—thanks, no doubt, to the productions’ massive street team of parents telling their millennial and Gen Z offspring that they watched something called “Yosemite.” Viewership shot up 104% between the premieres of the third and fourth seasons. The third season opener drew 4.2 million viewers in 2020. But the latest Yellowstone bested even HBO’s Game Of Thrones, which drew 6.6 million viewers for its fourth season premiere.

Taylor Sheridan and John Linson’s western series stars Kevin Costner and Wes Bentley, two members of the Dutton family, the owners of the largest ranch in the U.S. The Duttons don’t mess around. They go to great, suspenseful, and Ozark-ian lengths to maintain their land. But, more importantly, it features the Cos wearing a cowboy hat, which isn’t the hardest sell in the world.

Paramount is doubling and tripling down on all things Sheridan, releasing two new series from him in the coming months. First, The Mayor Of Kingstown, which stars everybody’s favorite Hawkeye, Jeremy Renner, premieres on November 14. The Yellowstone prequel series 1883, starring Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, and everybody’s favorite Thunderbolt Ross, ‌Sam Elliot, debuts on December 19.

Sheridan’s made a name for himself by putting a contemporary spin on the western genre. The writer of cowboy yarns, like Hell Or High Water and Wind River, Sheridan also directed the Angelina Jolie smoke-jumper thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead, which Warner Bros. released earlier this year. It has since become a fantastic movie to watch on a plane.

You can no longer escape it. It’s time to figure out what Yellowstone is. Don’t bother to search Twitter—they’re only talking about Succession over there.

Correction: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Yellowstone was available to stream on Paramount+. Yellowstone is available to stream on Peacock. An earlier version also incorrectly stated that Mayor Of Kingstown was a Yellowstone spin-off. We regret the error.

 
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