The Duttons chronicle the American West amid epidemics, droughts, and family intrigue before touching off the Great Depression of 1929,
On Paramount+ comes 1923, a new installment of Taylor Sheridan's Yellowstone film, starring Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren as the new members of the Dutton family. Or rather, of a new generation of Duttons, struggling with Prohibition, drought and epidemics in the early 1900s.
The first season hasn't even started yet that the series with the two thoroughbred actors has already been renewed for a second run. Power of Yellowstone, which from March 1 will appear on Sky and Now with the fifth season of the contemporary western, starring Kevin Costner, that kicked off the successful saga.
1923: the plot
The series is the second Yellowstone prequel coming after 1883 (also on Paramount+). Sheridan builds a new family story headed by patriarch Jacob (Harrison Ford) and wife Cara (Helen Mirren). The king and queen of the Yellowstone Ranch. Together they must cope with a period of profound change and evolution that plagues the American West. We are at the dawn of the Prohibition era and at a time when drought and epidemics decimate thousands of cattle, changing the concept of ranching (between 1923 and 1925 more than 70,000 landowners went bankrupt).
Sheridan delves into the roots of his early twentieth-century America, preparing us for what is known as the Great Depression of 1929. Not only that, he also tells us of intrigue and capitalism, innovation and tradition, continuing in the vein of the original Yellowstone (1923 in fact echoes the series starring Kevin Costner and the vicissitudes of his John Dutton III.) And of family relationships-Jacob and Cara raise John and Spencer, sons of James and Margaret (protagonists of 1883).
Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren on set together after nearly 40 years
The lead actors of 1923, two standouts, are the strength of the series. They reunite to star together 36 years after Peter Weir's 1986 Mosquito Coast. Also in the film, which put the director and Witness actor back together, they play husband and wife.
Ford is Allie Fox, an anti-capitalist man who with his wife (Mirren) and four children (including a very young River Phoenix) leave New York for the Mosquito Coast, between Panama and Guatemala, in search of freedom and a world that would listen to them.
The Yellowstone saga does not end with 1883 and 1923
The Yellowstone universe does not stop at 1923. From March 1 comes the fifth season of the original series starring Kevin Costner, and in addition, two spin-offs are in the pipeline: the first, also expected in 2023, is titled 6666 and will be set in the present day on the Four Sixes Ranch, which we have already heard about in the third and fourth seasons of Yellowstone.
1883: The Bass Reeves Story is the title of the second spin-off that will focus on the title character, namely a lawman (David Oyelowo), who was born a slave and then escaped during the Civil War to Native American territories, where he learned native languages before being freed with the passage of the 13th Amendment in 1865.
Ten years later Reeves was enlisted by U.S. Marshal James F. Fagan and assigned to the Indian territories, precisely because of his knowledge of the places. Reeves was the first African-American deputy U.S. marshal west of the Mississippi River, so much so that he is considered the historical figure who inspired the legendary Lone Rider.