The Madison Review: Taylor Sheridan's Emotional Family Drama Feels Like a Rough Draft

First things first: The Madison is not a Yellowstone spin-off. It was initially announced as such, then quietly revised. Like Yellowstone, The Madison is set in Montana and created by prolific and stylistically specific producer Taylor Sheridan, but that's where the connections end. Sheridan's shows often change a lot between announcement and production — upcomingTulsa King spin-off NOLA King recently turned into Frisco King, for example — but this is a particularly discombobulating example. There is a music cue at the end of the opening credits — a similar sweeping "daaaa-da" that will be instantly recognizable to fans — that indicates the show will have a connection to Yellowstone, but it doesn't. If you go into The Madison expecting a Yellowstone tie-in, you will be confused. 

The lack of clarity about what the show is is indicative of The Madison's general problem, which is that it feels slapdash even by Sheridan's overextended standards. Sheridan wrote all six episodes, and it feels like he must have banged them out in about six days. There's a meandering, rough draft quality to the show. It's not without its charms, but the overall sensation is that this is a side project that Sheridan did not give his full attention to. That being said, it's definitely a Taylor Sheridan show, with meaty monologues for top-tier actors and idiosyncratic plotting and philosophizing. Fans of his style may find plenty to enjoy — or they may wish it were more like his action-oriented shows. 

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The Madison's official description states that it's "Sheridan's most intimate work to date," and that's accurate. The show is an emotional family drama that stars Michelle Pfeiffer as Stacy Clyburn, a wealthy Manhattanite dealing with the aftermath of a devastating tragedy. Kurt Russell plays her husband, Preston, who loves to escape to the Madison River Valley of Montana, where he fly-fishes with his brother, Paul (Matthew Fox), and lives in harmony with nature like he can't in New York. The story follows Stacy as she sees Preston's Montana for the first time, with the rest of the family in tow — elder daughter Abigail (Beau Garrett), a divorcée with two daughters of her own; and younger daughter Paige (Elle Chapman) and her husband, Russell (Patrick J. Adams). It's a character study about family dynamics and grief. 

5.8

The Madison

at Paramount+

Like

• Some strong performances
• Beautiful cinematography

Dislike

• Unfocused writing
• An unsuccessful romance plot
• Falls apart in the last two episodes

Throughout his career, Sheridan has innovated an abstract approach to plot that's unusually character-driven — you could say it's all character, no plot — and he pushes that style to its extreme here. Very little happens, in the traditional TV sense. There's not much conflict, and characters don't have concrete, identifiable goals. The characters just kind of exist. They feel their feelings, they eat elk meat and drink whiskey, they talk to each other and launch into signature Sheridan soliloquies where he lays out his philosophy of how the world is and should be (nature is everything, men and women are different but complementary, it's rude to be on your phone during dinner, etc.). Scenes are long and slow. The narrative pauses to lovingly watch people fish in the same way that Yellowstone stopped to observe cowboys at work. If you enjoy the atmospheric vibe of Sheridan's shows, in some ways The Madison has the most Sheridanian vibe he's ever created. 

In other ways, it's the most different show he's ever made. He fully embraces his melodramatic tendencies with a story driven by pure emotion. The violence, tough talk, and cynicism that are integral to much of his work are absent. All of his previous Western series show animals getting killed, but here even the fish get caught-and-released. This is a softer Sheridan. He might say he's getting in touch with his feminine side. Critics have long knocked Sheridan for his overly exaggerated hell-raisers like Beth Dutton from Yellowstone and Angela Norris from Landman, but because he contains multitudes, he also writes juicy, dignified lead roles for women over 65. He still can't resist stereotypes — these women be shoppin' — but he creates the opportunity for Pfeiffer to go for it in every scene. She gives a big, vulnerable performance that makes use of her steeliness and sensitivity. Pfeiffer's performance is the most engaging part of the show. 

Adams, in his most prominent post-Suits role to date, also makes a good impression. His character, Russell, is a finance guy who's effete but well-meaning, and the show has an unexpected and endearing amount of affection for him. A show with this much grief can't really be fun, but what moments of levity there are mostly come from Russell, usually but not always along with his wife, Paige, Sheridan's latest young blond character played by a relatively unknown actress. Russell seems to be getting an arc where he learns how to be a "real man," but it cuts off before the end of the season. It must be getting pushed to Season 2, which has already been filmed. 

As interesting as it is to see Sheridan adapt his style to a different genre, The Madison has problems that keep it from amounting to more than a curiosity. The most significant is that the only romantic storyline with any meaningful tension is too absurd to buy into (Paramount asked reviewers to not reveal who it's between). Their relationship is so rushed and ungrounded — and the actors' chemistry so lacking — that it feels forced. It's the show's most egregious example of Sheridan not taking the time to figure out something that's not working and instead just ramming it through. Episodes end seemingly at random, with no hook to hit play on the next. The credits roll and you'll say, "That's it?" And when the Clyburns return to New York for the final two episodes of the season, things get really sloppy. The show gets bogged down in repetitive scenes where Stacy does sessions with a therapist — played by Will Arnett, whose presence never stops being distracting — who drinks with her while she swears at him and insults his sweaters. Scenes stumble around in search of a reason why they're in the show until something emerges — and occasionally nothing does, like in a truly baffling, apparently narratively meaningless scene where a Montana cop has an encounter with two people from California who don't know how to behave. It's just Sheridan taking a dig at people who live on the coasts, which he does so often on The Madison that it gets annoying. The last two episodes feel unedited, like no one said, "We don't need all this; just get to the point." 

The show does look beautiful. All six episodes are directed by Sheridan's frequent collaborator Christina Alexandra Voros, who also serves as director of photography. She shoots it all with a bright color palette that makes the shades of gold in Montana's landscape pop. 

The Madison is likely to go down as an oddity in Sheridan's body of work — a smaller-scale show where he tried something different and got out of his comfort zone. (Who would have ever thought Sheridan would write something set in New York City?) But the thing about experiments is that they don't always work. And The Madison could have spent more time in the lab before being released into the wild. 

Premieres: Saturday, March 14 on Paramount+
Who's in it: Michelle Pfeiffer, Kurt Russell, Patrick J. Adams, Beau Garrett, Elle Chapman, Ben Schnetzer, Kevin Zegers
Who's behind it: Taylor Sheridan
For fans of: The Sheridanverse
How many episodes we watched: 6 of 6