A river runs through The Madison, Taylor Sheridan‘s (Yellowstone) latest ode to the open spaces and unspoiled beauty of Montana. (Indeed, 1992’s A River Runs Through It has its own cameo in the series, which gives a shout-out to the late actor/director Robert Redford after the first episode.) The river is the Madison, never to be confused with Manhattan’s Madison Avenue — or anything else associated with the Big City, anathema to the pure souls who inhabit the Western heartland.
Ever flowing, a symbol of life and nourishment of the soul, the Madison (gorgeously shot by director of photography and series director Christina Alexandra Voros) becomes a place of healing for the sinfully wealthy Clyburn family. Most especially for matriarch Stacy (a luminous Michelle Pfeiffer), who resisted the call of the wild for years until a terrible tragedy beckons her entire family of “city mice” to abandon the world of luxury townhouses for an outpost with an outhouse.
Paramount+
This is where Stacy’s husband of nearly 40 years, Preston (a likably rugged Kurt Russell), feels most at home, fly fishing in blissful solitude with his brother Paul (Matthew Fox). He made a fortune in finance, but Preston only feels alive when immersed in Montana’s Zen landscape. Too bad it took Stacy and her spoiled brood so long to experience it. Unthinkable loss shares space with regret as the Clyburns become acclimated to roughing it.
Some will dismiss The Madison as grief porn, and they won’t be wrong. The six-episode season (airing in two three-hour batches on consecutive Saturdays) is a wallow in woe, though Pfeiffer commands the camera in much the way Oscar front-runner Jessie Buckley does in the similarly themed Hamnet. Don’t be surprised if her textured performance of rage, sorrow, and motherly resilience earns her an Emmy nomination.
The Madison is a change of pace for Sheridan, whose series from Yellowstone onward tend to favor melodrama over mood. And while there is one wreck-the-cabin catfight between squabbling siblings, the violence here leans mostly into the emotional, and the tone is elegiac, the pace soothingly slow. There’s not much plot, and what little there is we’re forbidden to discuss, so let’s just say if you’re looking for a solid tearjerking catharsis, you might find it here.
In other respects, this has many hallmarks of a Sheridan show, scoring too many easy points against the ridiculous city slickers. When Stacy’s whiny younger daughter Paige (Elle Chapman) ventures into the aforementioned outdoor privy, she has a slapstick encounter with a hornet’s nest. Her henpecked husband Russell (Suits‘ Patrick J. Adams) isn’t much luckier when he attempts to man up and defuse the situation, venturing out in slippers and striped PJs.
Elder daughter Abby (Beau Garrett) is a prickly divorcee with a barbed tongue and two daughters whose angelic looks mask a privileged attitude that causes them to chide a friendly neighbor for using the word “Indian” instead of expressing proper gratitude for the food he brings them. (Grandma Stacy gives the girls, and their mother, a real talking to from her high horse.) “Woke” is not welcome in a series about being awakened to Nature’s therapeutic qualities.
Even before the tragic event that triggers the main storyline, lady-who-lunches Stacy is heard saying of her Upper East Side existence, “You have to wonder why we choose to live in a place we need to escape.” Granted, such words ring hollow to this Hoosier-turned-New Yorker, but there’s no doubt the breathtaking serenity of the Madison river valley makes it a great place to visit, to be restored, perhaps even to live. (A second season has already been filmed.) The murderously combative Duttons of Yellowstone infamy might scoff at these heart-on-their-designer-sleeve interlopers, but there’s room for everyone in Sheridan’s expansive and wildly successful TV universe.
The Madison, Series Premiere (three episodes), Saturday, March 13, Paramount+
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