Ahead of The Madison‘s premiere on Paramount+, Taylor Sheridan‘s latest Montana-based drama had already been renewed for a second season, which has already been filmed. What came as a surprise for many was that, following the success of the first season, the network opted to renew The Madison for a third season as well. In our post-Yellowstone streaming landscape, this may signal a shift in the viewing habits of longtime Paramount subscribers — and perhaps a change in direction for Sheridan himself.
‘The Madison’ Is Taylor Sheridan’s Most Intimate Drama Yet
For anyone who has already watched Season 1 of The Madison, the confirmation of a third season comes as a welcome surprise. The drama stars powerhouses like Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell, with the former playing Clyburn matriarch Stacy as her family mourns a very personal loss. The six-part drama has made waves with critics and viewers upon its release, many of whom are dubbing it as Sheridan’s greatest series yet — and there’s certainly an argument to be made there. Indeed, this quick renewal may prove to be an important turn for the streaming platform, with Paramount hoping to capitalize on interests that it may not have realized its viewers had.
The Madison may not be a family-friendly series, but it is about a family at the lowest point in their lives. What sets The Madison apart from not just Yellowstone, but just about every other Sheridan-penned drama, is its emphasis on family dynamics and the personal drama that erupts from them. Rather than the soapy tension resulting from high-stakes crime, as seen in Landman or the Yellowstone universe, The Madison is an intimate portrayal of a concept that just about every human being will understand​​​​​: grief. Of course, there’s far more to it than that; its brilliance in confronting East Coast politics with modern West realities, and the overall themes of parental failure, cultural divides, and personal hypocrisy, is unencumbered by unrealistic firefights or Godfather-adjacent conspiracies. Aside from 1883, The Madison feels like Sheridan at his most authentic.
As Taylor Sheridan Prepares to Leave Paramount, His New Series Shows Why He Dominates TV
The show has been renewed for two more seasons.
While all of Sheridan’s television dramas deal with family struggles, most do so in an environment divorced from reality. On some level, viewers prefer to look into worlds unlike their own, watching characters who couldn’t be further from them in environments they only have cursory knowledge of. Yet, The Madison has clearly struck a chord with viewers. Few can identify with the highly volatile, acid-spewing relationship between Jamie (Wes Bentley) and Beth Dutton (Kelly Reilly) on Yellowstone, but many have either lived or witnessed the tension between sisters like Abigail (Beau Garrett) and Paige (Elle Chapman). Meanwhile, The Madison‘s emphasis on grief offers an interesting window into something that most people can likely relate to.
‘The Madison’ Proves That Taylor Sheridan Is at His Best When the Stakes Are Personal
Arguably, some viewers have grown tired of Taylor Sheridan’s recycled plotlines and usual antics because those who remember his American Frontier trilogy fondly know that there’s more to him than rough-and-tumble antiheroes and constant soliloquies about land and legacy. Make no mistake, The Madison still emphasizes its environment, highlighting the Ennis area and the surrounding “Last Best Place,” but the land represents the lost potential that the Clyburn family may have had with Preston (Russell) and his brother Paul (Matthew Fox) out in the contemporary West. In fact, The Madison isn’t really a neo-Western, though it’s billed as one due to the modern frontier setting. In reality, it’s a slice-of-life picture that emphasizes the trials and tribulations of one New York family as they realize that the curated life they lived was not what was hoped or planned for them.
Sheridan’s ability to create grounded, well-rounded, and dynamic characters is the strongest component of The Madison, building on the success of presences like John Dutton (Kevin Costner), Rip Wheeler (Cole Hauser), Joe McNamara (Zoe Saldaña), or Dwight Manfredi (Sylvester Stallone). While these characters always felt larger-than-life, culled specifically for the weighty, fictitious environment of whichever respective Sheridan series they belong in (you know that Yellowstone isn’t really like Montana, right?), there’s an authenticity to The Madison‘s characters that deserves high praise. Not to say they’re all good people, or that they don’t clearly have their own demons to wrestle with, but they feel realistic, understandable, and deeply human.
The Madison is a drama that doesn’t allow its neo-Western perceptions to pigeonhole it into a specific brand, a la the Dutton franchise. It’s not stumbling into the same pitfalls that Marshals is, nor is it more of the same as Dutton Ranch appears to be. This is Taylor Sheridan trying something new, something profound — and it’s about time.
