No creator is more prolific in television right now than Taylor Sheridan. He’s had one hit after another on Paramount+. The writer of Sicario and Hell or High Waterhit it big as the mastermind behind Yellowstone. That was followed up by shows such as 1923, Tulsa King, and Dutton Ranch. Among them is a series headlined by Hollywood heavyweights Billy Bob Thornton and Demi Moore. Landman premiered on Paramount+ in 2024. After two successful seasons, it’s getting ready for a third. Like HBO’s hit Emmy winner Succession, Landman is a compelling series that centers its focus on the drama of a powerful family. If you have yet to check it out, give it a watch before Season 3 arrives.
What Is ‘Landman’ About?
As Succession is about the power and the conflict it creates between the Roy family, Taylor Sheridan’s Landman finds the same intrigue with the Norris’s. Tommy Norris (Thornton) serves as oil company M-Tex’s crisis manager. Known as a landman, Norris is the go-between between his boss, Monty Miller (Jon Hamm), and landowners in West Texas. It’s his job to calm conflicts and secure deals for M-Tex. Tommy is a man in great pain. He’s besieged by alcoholism and immense debt, and he finds no relief with his family. Tommy is estranged from his father, T.L. Norris (Sam Elliott), is divorced from Angela Norris (Ali Larter), and doesn’t get to see much of his kids.
Collider Exclusive · Taylor Sheridan Universe Quiz Which Taylor Sheridan Show Do You Belong In? Yellowstone · Landman · Tulsa King · Mayor of Kingstown
Four worlds. All of them brutal, complicated, and built on power, loyalty, and the price of survival. Taylor Sheridan doesn’t write heroes — he writes people who do what they have to do and live with the cost. Ten questions will reveal which one of his worlds you were made for.
🤠Yellowstone
🛢️Landman
👑Tulsa King
⚖️Mayor of Kingstown
01
Where does your power come from? In Sheridan’s world, everyone has leverage. The question is what kind.
02
Who do you put first, no matter what? Loyalty in Sheridan’s universe is always absolute — and always costly.
03
Someone crosses a line. How do you respond? Every Sheridan protagonist has a line. What matters is what happens after it’s crossed.
04
Where do you feel most in your element? Sheridan’s worlds are as much about place as they are about people.
05
How do you feel about operating in the grey? Nobody in a Sheridan show has clean hands. The question is how they carry the dirt.
06
What are you actually fighting to hold onto? Every Sheridan character is fighting a war. The real question is what they’re defending.
07
How do you lead? Authority in Sheridan’s world is never given — it’s established, maintained, and constantly tested.
08
Someone new arrives and tries to change how things work. Your reaction? Every Sheridan show has an outsider disrupting an established order. Sometimes that outsider is you.
09
What has your position cost you? Nobody gets to where these characters are without paying for it. The bill is always personal.
10
When it’s over, what do you want people to say? Sheridan’s characters all know the ending is coming. The question is what they leave behind.
Sheridan Has Spoken You Belong In…
The show that claimed the most of your answers is the world you were built for. If two tied, both are shown — you’re complicated enough to straddle two Sheridan universes.
🤠 Yellowstone
🛢️ Landman
👑 Tulsa King
⚖️ Mayor of Kingstown
You are a Dutton — or you might as well be. You understand that some things are worth protecting at any cost, and that the modern world’s indifference to history, to land, to legacy, is not something you’re willing to accept quietly. You lead from the front, you carry your family’s weight without complaint, and when someone threatens what’s yours, you don’t escalate — you finish it. You’re not cruel. But you are absolute. In Yellowstone’s world, that combination of ferocity and loyalty doesn’t make you a villain. It makes you the only thing standing between everything that matters and everyone who wants to take it.
You thrive in the chaos of high-stakes negotiation, where the money is enormous, the margins are thin, and the wrong word in the wrong room can cost everyone everything. You’re a fixer — the person called when a situation is already on fire and needs someone with the nerve to walk into it. West Texas oil country rewards exactly what you are: sharp, adaptable, unsentimental, and absolutely clear-eyed about what people want and what they’ll do to get it. You’re not naive enough to think this world is fair. You’re smart enough to be the one deciding who it’s fair to.
You are a Dwight Manfredi — someone who has served their time, paid their dues, and arrived somewhere unexpected with nothing but their reputation and their wits. You adapt without losing yourself. You build loyalty through respect rather than fear, though you’re not above reminding people that the two aren’t mutually exclusive. Tulsa King is for people who are still standing when everyone assumed they’d be finished — who find, in an unfamiliar place, that they’re more capable than the world gave them credit for. You don’t need a throne. You build one, wherever you happen to land.
You carry the weight of a system that is broken by design, and you do it anyway — because someone has to, and because you’re the only one positioned to do it without the whole thing collapsing. Mike McLusky’s world is for people who are comfortable operating where there are no good options, only less catastrophic ones. You speak every language: law enforcement, criminal, political, human. That fluency makes you invaluable and it makes you a target. You’ve made your peace with both. Mayor of Kingstown belongs to people who understand that keeping the peace is not the same as being at peace — and who do the job regardless.
Tommy Norris doesn’t have some dull desk job. He’s in the thick of it, whether it be dealing with deadly drug cartels or the horrors of oil rigs and the death they can cause if something goes wrong. Throw in the back-and-forth relationship with Angela that won’t die, and Tommy has his hands full. It gets even more complicated in Season 2 of Landman when a shocking twist puts Tommy in a higher position with even more stress when Monty’s wife, Cami Miller (Moore), begins to show off her power. With the corporate and family chaos driven by dark humor, Landman takes what worked in the New York City boardrooms of Succession to the oil fields of Texas.
‘Landman’ Is Carried By Its Impressive Performances
Billy Bob Thornton as Tommy Norris sitting in a chair, holding his hat and talking in Landman.Image via Paramount+
Ali Larter as Angela in Landman episode 10, season 2, streaming on Paramount+. Photo Credit: Emerson Miller/Paramount+
Image via Emerson Miller/Paramount+
Cami Miller standing at a podium in a white suit in Landman Season 2.Image via Paramount+
Michelle Randolph and Ali Larter in ‘Landman’Image via Paramount+
Landman is controversial, but controversy creates intrigue. Taylor Sheridan doesn’t fail to deliver on this point, and his series gets better where it first fails. The most disappointing part of Season 1 was how it didn’t do justice to its female characters. They come across as simple, cookie-cutter tropes who are there to carry the plot for the men. Ali Larter’s Angela Norris doesn’t have a lot to do other than come across as shallow and materialistic, and Demi Moore’s Cami Miller is barely around. This means Season 1 of Landman‘s weight is carried by the men.
Tommy Norris is an anti-hero in the same way that many characters in Succession are. If he was a great guy with no issues, where would the conflict and growth come from? Just ask Jon Hamm how doing the opposite worked out on Mad Men. Tommy does bad things for bad men; still, there is good underneath his actions. He loves his ex-wife dearly, and he wants her and his children, Ainsley (Michelle Randolph) and Cooper (Jacob Lofland), back in his life. He’s a problematic character, but not one who is irredeemable, and Thornton makes him a joy to watch evolve.
Season 2 of Landman only gets better. Tommy Norris remains charming in the most frustrating of ways, and Sam Elliott’s screen time brings more drama to his life. Sheridan improves on his woman problem in Season 2, with the season bringing in Kayla Wallace‘s Rebecca Falcone. Her character is the answer to the questions that come with the ethics of what Tommy and others like him do. Most importantly, Landman‘s second season realizes what they have with Demi Moore. Just as Succession has powerful female characters like Shiv (Sarah Snook) and Gerri (J. Smith Cameron), Landman Season 2 leans into Cami Miller’s storyline. She’s not in the background this time around. Cami is a force to be reckoned with, a character who demands your attention thanks to the Oscar-nominated actor who plays her. Landman isn’t perfect. It embodies some of the best and worst of what Taylor Sheridan has done before. What it never is, though, is boring.
Image via Paramount+
Image via Emerson Miller/Paramount+
Image via Paramount+
Image via Paramount+
Image via Emerson Miller / ©Paramount+/Viacom Intl. / Courtesy Everett Collection
