The Madison Review: Taylor Sheridan's Quietest Show Is Also His Riskiest

Verdict: The Madison is the most unexpected Taylor Sheridan show, the most emotionally driven, and probably the most divisive. Michelle Pfeiffer is doing some of the best work of her career. Kurt Russell is barely in it. The Montana landscapes are gorgeous. The pacing is uneven. The show is also already renewed for a second season, and on the strength of S1's quieter moments, that renewal is earned. 7/10.

Taylor Sheridan has built an empire on neo-Westerns about violence, land, family, and what those three things do to each other. Yellowstone. 1883. 1923. Mayor of Kingstown. Tulsa King. Landman. Lioness. Marshals (the Yellowstone spin-off, which is doing fine). The Sheridan-verse is the most consistent franchise machine in American TV.

The Madison is the show in the franchise that argues for what Sheridan can do when he turns the franchise down.

Premiered March 14, 2026 on Paramount+ and ran six episodes through March 21. Initially marketed as a Yellowstone spin-off, then confirmed as a standalone. Michelle Pfeiffer plays Stacy Clyburn, the matriarch of a wealthy New York family approaching her 50th wedding anniversary. Kurt Russell plays her husband Preston, who escapes to a cabin in Montana's Madison River Valley whenever he can. Matthew Fox plays Preston's younger brother Paul (the 15-year age gap between the actors is a problem the show pretends isn't a problem). Patrick J. Adams, Beau Garrett, Amiah Miller, and Elle Chapman play the next generation of Clyburns. Will Arnett shows up as Dr. Phil Yorn.

The premise sounds like a Hallmark movie. Wealthy New York family escapes to Montana, encounters cowboys, learns about themselves. Sheridan's first creative decision is to make the premise harder than that — early in the season, a major Clyburn family member dies, and the rest of the season is structured around the family's grief and the choice to move (rather than visit) to Montana in the aftermath. The Hallmark setup turns into a grief drama. Whether you find this manipulative or affecting will probably determine your reception of the entire show.

I found it affecting. Pfeiffer is the reason.

Stacy Clyburn is one of the best performances Pfeiffer has given in 20 years. The character is the engine of the show — the one making decisions, the one holding the family together, the one allowed to fall apart in private. Pfeiffer plays her with the kind of contained interior life that requires a lead actor with nothing to prove. She's not chasing scenes. She's letting the camera find her. The result is the kind of performance that's quiet enough to miss on a first watch and devastating on a rewatch.

The show is built around her. Most of Sheridan's recent leads (Kevin Costner, Sylvester Stallone, Billy Bob Thornton, Jeremy Renner) have been male, gruff, and good at performing competence. Pfeiffer's Stacy is competent in a different way — she's running a family the way a CEO runs a company, with controlled grief layered underneath. The show trusts her to carry scenes that would have been action setpieces in any other Sheridan project. She does.

The other major performance is Kurt Russell's, and that's where the show runs into its biggest structural problem.

Russell was a leading-cast member of The Madison on paper. In the actual season, his appearances are limited. The reason — confirmed in pre-release press — is that Russell was contractually obligated to film Monarch: Legacy of Monsters Season 2 during The Madison's production window. The producers and Pfeiffer wanted him for the role badly enough that Paramount agreed to film S1 mostly without him and combine the rest of his scenes with S2 shooting later. The result is that Russell's character appears in flashbacks, on the phone, in the cabin briefly, and otherwise haunts the show as an absence rather than a presence.

This isn't entirely a problem. The absence does some thematic work — the show is about grief, after all. But it's also clearly a workaround rather than a creative choice, and viewers will feel the difference. The scenes Russell IS in are excellent. There aren't enough of them.

The supporting cast does a lot of compensating. Matthew Fox is restrained and surprisingly good as Paul Clyburn. Patrick J. Adams (a long way from Suits) plays one of the next-generation Clyburns with a wounded charisma that's the show's secondary engine. Beau Garrett does the most with the least screen time — her character's storyline in the final two episodes is the season's quietest emotional payoff. Kevin Zegers and Danielle Vasinova as the Harris ranchers — the locals who become the family's tutors in Montana life — give the show its most genuinely neo-Western texture. Will Arnett's Dr. Phil Yorn is the show's funniest character, which is also the strangest thing to say about a Will Arnett character in a Taylor Sheridan show.

Where the show struggles is pacing. The early episodes — particularly episode two, when the family is still processing the death — move slowly enough that some viewers checked out. Reviews at release were mixed (63% on Rotten Tomatoes), and the show's slip from #1 on Paramount+ to off the charts within 30 days suggests audience retention was a real problem. Sheridan's other shows lean on plot momentum to carry viewers through the slower scenes. The Madison doesn't have that engine. It depends on viewer patience.

When the patience pays off, the show is unusually good. Episode four — set entirely in Montana, with the family beginning to integrate into the local community — is one of the best individual episodes Sheridan has written. The dinner scene between Pfeiffer and Vasinova (in which Stacy and Kestrel slowly figure out that they could actually be friends across the vast cultural distance between them) is the kind of scene Sheridan rarely allows himself. No politics. No violence. No competing legacies. Two women, in a kitchen, figuring out a relationship.

The show is also genuinely funny in ways the rest of the Sheridan-verse usually isn't. The family bickering carries some of the load. Will Arnett's running gag about his medical practice gets funnier each episode. The fish-out-of-water comedy of New Yorkers trying to operate outdoor toilets and navigate cattle is treated with affection rather than condescension.

The visual treatment is Sheridan's most consistent strength. Director Christina Alexandra Voros (who has directed multiple episodes of Yellowstone, 1883, and 1923) shoots Montana in a way that makes the landscape feel like a character. The wildlife sequences — fly-fishing scenes especially — have the kind of patient, hushed observation that makes the Sheridan-verse work even when the writing doesn't. Greig Fraser-level visual ambition this isn't, but it's a real step up from what most Paramount+ shows manage.

The show's biggest single weakness is its ending. The final episode pulls together threads that the slower middle episodes earned, but it also wraps too neatly for a story this much about ongoing grief. Stacy's arc lands. The family's adjustment to Montana feels rushed. There's also at least one plot beat in the finale that feels imported from a different show — a confrontation between Stacy and a member of the local community that escalates faster than the writing supports.

These problems are real. They're also forgivable in a show this clearly setting itself up for a longer run. The Madison has been renewed for a second season, which will combine Russell's full presence with Pfeiffer's continued lead. The pieces are in place for a stronger S2.

In the meantime, S1 is worth your time if you're willing to meet the show at its actual pace. It's not Yellowstone. It's not 1923. It's slower, quieter, and more interested in interior life than in conflict. Whether that's a feature or a bug depends on what you want from Taylor Sheridan.

I want both. The Madison gives me the interior version. Marshals is on CBS for the other version. There's room for both.

Where to Watch

All six episodes of The Madison Season 1 are streaming on Paramount+. The show is also available on SkyShowtime in European territories.

Season 2 is confirmed in production for a 2027 release window.

What About the Rest of the Sheridan-Verse?

If you want more from Taylor Sheridan after The Madison, the franchise is sprawling. Yellowstone (Paramount+) is the foundational show. 1883 and 1923 (Paramount+) are the prequels. Mayor of Kingstown (Paramount+) is the urban-corruption show. Tulsa King (Paramount+) is the Stallone-as-mobster show. Landman (Paramount+) is the Billy Bob Thornton oil-industry show. Lioness (Paramount+) is the espionage show. Marshals (CBS and Paramount+) is the most recent Yellowstone spin-off, with Luke Grimes as Kayce Dutton. A new spin-off, Dutton Ranch, premieres in late 2026.

Sheridan's relationship with Paramount ends in 2029. He's moving to NBCUniversal after that. The Sheridan-verse on Paramount+ has roughly three more years of new content before the migration. Watch accordingly.

The bottom line: The Madison is the most surprising Sheridan show. Pfeiffer carries it. The Russell limitation hurts but doesn't break it. The pacing is uneven. The patience pays off. 7/10.

For more on prestige TV in adjacent territory, see our Wire vs Breaking Bad piece.