‘Dutton Ranch’ Review: Paramount+’s Latest Addition to the ‘Yellowstone’ Universe Has Just Enough Meat on the Bone

From the moment Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) looks over the Montana landscape to sigh, “Did you ever imagine we could have this? This quiet?” to her equally contented husband, we know their peace cannot be long for this earth. There would be no show if it were. And lo and behold: We’re not even at the opening credits before a fire blazes in to destroy the couple’s hard-won serenity, forcing them to start fresh.

Well — kind of fresh. As major characters from Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount Network hit Yellowstone, Beth, her husband Rip (Cole Hauser) and their ward Carter (Finn Little) cannot help but bring several seasons’ worth of baggage with them to their new cattle ranch in Texas. But the change in scenery proves just enough to allow the latest of this franchise’s many spinoffs, Paramount+’s Dutton Ranch, to open itself up to newcomers in the four (of nine) hours sent to critics, while still dishing out familiar soap operatics.

Where the Duttons and their various dramas were well known in their corner of Montana, they’re total newcomers in the small town of Rio Paloma, nestled a few hours north of the Mexican border. And from the moment they land, they’re making new friends and new enemies as quickly as creator Chad Feehan can invent them.

The former camp include a pair of loyal ranch hands, the friendly Azul (J.R. Villarreal) and the sad-eyed Zachariah (Marc Menchaca), as well as Everett (Ed Harris), a gallant Navy veteran turned veterinarian. (It tells you something about the insistently straight-faced tone of Dutton Ranch that it refrains from cracking even the smallest joke about Everett being a vet vet.)

The latter camp is mostly comprised of people associated with 10 Petal Ranch, the slicker, larger, more corporatized cattle operation down the road. At the top of that food chain sits Beulah Jackson (Annette Bening), a ruthless matriarch who’s none too pleased to learn the Duttons have purchased the property she’d been hoping to snap up for herself.

As that list of parenthetical names might suggest, Dutton Ranch’s biggest blessing is its cast. Harris nestles into this dusty landscape as comfortably as a foot sliding into a broken-in boot, his quiet decency lending the entire endeavor a welcome touch of gravitas. Bening’s performance feels more phoned-in (so far, at least, this “grizzly in Gucci” seems like she could have been played by any other actress of comparable star power and age range). But she is still Annette Bening, and thus perfectly enjoyable to watch swan around in giant belt buckles or smile veiled threats at recalcitrant employees.

This is really Reilly’s show, however, and she rises to the challenge with ease. Her particular magnetism might be best exemplified by a scene in which Beth clacks around a luxury Dallas hotel in Louboutin stilettos while lugging a beat-up cooler with a “Don’t be a shitass” sticker: Here is a confidently glamorous lady who doesn’t mind dirt under her fingernails, a scheming business mind with a startlingly direct affect.

So watchable is Beth that it’s almost enough to make up for the fact that her co-lead barely registers at all. Rip’s favorite piece of romantic advice is, “You don’t do anything, you don’t say anything, you just listen”; judging by how forgettable he is, you can’t accuse the guy of not walking the walk.

Throw these big personalities (and Rip) together, and Dutton Ranch comes away with a tangle of storylines that land ever slightly more often than not. Its heroes and villains may lack the psychological depth or emotional complexity of the best TV characters, given as they are to simply blurting out loud what their motivations are. But the brewing rivalry between the two ranches — as well as the growing enmity between Beulah’s sons, the dutifully competent Joaquin (Juan Pablo Raba) and the violently coked-up Rob-Will (Jai Courtney) — scratch a certain Succession-lite itch.

The Duttons’ struggle to grow their business offers both a picturesque fantasy of rural life (premiere director Christina Alexandra Voros never passes up an opportunity to capture a beautiful sunrise over a sleepy field) and a look at its harder realities (a storyline about disease spreading through the herd ends in devastating fashion). It helps on both fronts that the self-important speeches that have been a hallmark of the wider Sheridanverse are reasonably restrained here, as is any politically coded carping about the degeneracy of cities or the naïveté of liberal elites.

On the other hand, there are some baffling character decisions that exist solely to set up later narrative developments (there is no other way to explain Rip’s response to finding a dead body on his property), and a few plot beats that have already begun to repeat themselves. And the series seems about as interested in Carter as the benignly neglectful Beth and Rip seem to be. He spends most of his time sidelined to a dull romantic subplot with a spoiled sexpot (Natalie Alyn Lind’s Oreana) who comes across less like an actual woman than a teenage boy’s fantasy of one.

As of a little less than halfway through the season, Dutton Ranch has yet to switch from sowing to reaping. It could be that the series will click into a higher gear once it does, braiding together all these disparate themes and arcs to churn out one outrageous reveal or explosive confrontation after another. As it is, there’s already been one literal explosion, set by two characters who get to walk away in one of those screen clichés so cheesy yet so cool they’re hard to mind.

It feels equally possible that all of this potential will fizzle, undone by an emphasis on twists over characters or self-mythologizing over crowd-pleasing, until nothing happening with these Duttons seems worth paying attention to anymore. Perhaps Beth and Rip would even prefer that — to hear them tell it, all they want to do is be left in peace to find their own happiness. But where would the fun be for us in that?