“Landman” Goes Down Like a Michelob Ultra

Oil and masculinity: both are oftentimes crude, both are considered toxic in the twenty-first century. So it only makes sense that the two are as tightly bound as a bolt on a rig in “Landman,” the latest hit series from the neo-Western television auteur Taylor Sheridan, on Paramount+. At the center of the show is Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton), a grizzled and cynical but ultimately good-hearted consigliere to a reckless oil-field billionaire, Monty Miller (Jon Hamm). Where Sheridan’s expansive “Yellowstone” franchise focusses on the landowning class, “Landman” depicts the considerably less glamorous world of a middleman toiling for the rich.