Last week, it felt like everyone was talking about *that one scene* in Landman on Paramount+, the one with Billy Bob Thornton’s Tommy Norris getting an earful from his on-screen daughter about her teenage sexcapades. This week, an all-new Landman clip is going viral — as the series also remains one of the most-viewed TV shows on all of streaming, according to the latest Top 10 chart from Reelgood.
In this new scene, Thornton’s Norris goes off on what he sees as misconceptions about clean energy. “Please, Mr. Oilman, tell me how the wind is bad for the environment?” snipes a lawyer played by Kayla Wallace at Norris. They’re talking about wind turbines during the conversation, which you can watch here. In response, Norris drawls: “You have any idea how much diesel will have to burn to mix that much concrete or make that steel and haul this s–t out here and put it together with a 450-foot crane? You want to guess how much oil it takes to lubricate that f—ing thing? Or winterize it? In its 20-year lifespan, it won’t offset the carbon footprint of making it. And don’t get me started on solar panels and the lithium in your tesla battery.”
Say what you will about Taylor Sheridan, the co-creator of Landman as well as two other Paramount+ series that are among the most-watched TV shows on streaming right now. But the man has a winning formula, and Paramount’s streamer is milking it for all it’s worth. To show you what I mean, here’s Reelgood’s latest ranking of the hottest TV shows (for the 7-day period that ended on Nov. 27):
- Landman (Paramount+)
- Yellowstone (The Paramount Network)
- A Man on the Inside (Netflix)
- Silo (Apple TV+)
- The Day of the Jackal (Peacock)
- Dune: Prophecy (HBO/Max)
- Cross (Prime Video)
- Lioness (Paramount+)
- Say Nothing (FX/Hulu)
- Arcane (Netflix)
Are shows like Sheridan’s Landman, Yellowstone, or Lioness, which comprise 30% of the Top 10 list you see above, ever going to wind up on the rankings of the best TV shows of all time? There’s not a chance in hell of that ever happening, obviously, but that’s because shows like Landman — in which Thornton plays a crisis manager for Big Oil — are more mainstream delights. Red meat for the masses. The kind of TV shows that draw in viewers by the millions but that professional critics turn up their noses at.
To prepare that ranking above, by the way, Reelgood monitors 20 million viewing decisions each month across every streaming platform in the US, from Apple TV+ to Max, Peacock, Disney+, Hulu, Netflix, Prime Video, and Paramount+. That makes its ranking always an interesting snapshot, to say the least, given that it encompasses so many platforms and thus offers an indication of what’s hot from across the streaming world.
This might also be the first time I’ve ever seen the #1 and #2 shows on the week’s list stemming from the same creator — a TV hitmaker whose series tend toward a celebration of masculinity, of rugged individualism, threatened industries and ways of life, and family legacies under some kind of threat.
Besides Yellowstone, meanwhile, other hit series dominating the ranking this week include Peacock’s new spy drama The Day of the Jackal, which is coming back for another season (check out our interview with star Eddie Redmayne here). Netflix’s A Man on the Inside, based on an Oscar-nominated documentary, and FX’s new drama Say Nothing (about the era of The Troubles in Ireland) are both drawing praise for being some of the most alternately enjoyable and well-written TV shows you’ll find on any streamer at the moment.