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Yellowstone‘s massive success has led to any show that is soapy and takes place on a ranch to be compared to it. But a new series from Australia, which takes place at the largest cattle station in the world, really is a Down Under take on Yellowstone, albeit with a little bit more of a dramatic polish to it.
TERRITORY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A woman looks out on an arid landscape. “People say the Territory has two seasons: drought and flood. And it’s true. Everything up here is trying to kill you.”
The Gist: Marianne Station, located in the Northern Territories of Australia, is so massive, it’s bigger than Belgium. According to the owner, Daniel Lawson (Jake Ryan), it’s the biggest cattle station (Aussie for cattle ranch) on the planet. Daniel is supposed to lead the latest muster (Aussie for roundup), but a worker tells his sister-in-law Emily (Anna Torv) that he hasn’t shown up yet.
The number of cattle being mustered is so large that Daniel hired the Brannocks, a band of professional musterers, to help, much to the objection of Daniel’s older brother Graham (Michael Dorman), who still feels he should have been put in charge of the ranch by the family patriarch, Colin Lawson (Robert Taylor).
In the meantime we see Daniel, in a remote section of the station, with an injured leg after his horse threw him off. He struggles to move around, and when dingoes and hyenas smell blood, he gruffy says, “Come on, then, let’s fucking have it!” before being mauled to death. Graham eventually finds him while helping two young crewmembers clear dams for the muster.
With Daniel dead, Colin has to figure out who to put in charge of the ranch; he isn’t up to the task anymore because of his age. Graham feels he can do it, but Colin never thought that Graham had what it took to run the station, especially given Colin’s drinking issues.
Despite Emily’s loyalty to the Lawson family since marrying into it and her business acumen, Colin never trusted her to take over the station, despite the fact that its fortunes are starting to fail. He has had issues with her family, led by her brother Hank Hodge (Dan Wyllie) for years; more than once, the Hodges have been accused of stealing cattle from Marianne Station.
After a fight breaks out between Colin and Hank at Daniel’s memorial, Graham’s son Marshall (Sam Corlett), who flew in for the funeral and wants no part of the family business, comes to his grandfather’s defense. Colin decides to name Marshall as the new CEO of the ranch, leading Emily to make a deal with her father-in-law that involves her daughter (Philippa Northeast), who just dropped out of agricultural college.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? It’s not a stretch to say that Territory is an Australian take on Yellowstone.
Our Take: Territory, created by Timothy Lee and Ben Davies, pretty much tells you what it’s going to be about from the jump, mixing spectacular outback footage with a roiling succession battle for a business that has financial vultures circling around it.
The Brannocks think they can buy the Lawsons out, and a mineral speculator named Sandra Kirby (Sara Wiseman) is looking to either pay them to mine on their land or buy them out completely. In the meantime, Emily, who is the ranch’s heart and soul, is dissatisfied with her marriage to Graham and struggles to show her father in law that she’s loyal to the Lawsons over even her own family.
There’s a lot going on, and a lot of characters to keep track of. What we wished is that we got a bit more about how well Daniel ran the station before his untimely demise; we see him in a video explaining how big the ranch is and the family tradition of running it, but most of what we know about him is secondhand.
The show is certainly setting itself up to have Torv at its center while the struggle to keep the ranch in the family coincides with just who is going to run the place, but there were times when we wanted to slow down and really figure out who is related to whom, who wants to run the ranch and who doesn’t, and where people are acting against the family’s interests. We didn’t really get that chance during the first episode.
Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode, though there may be more as the series goes along.
Parting Shot: A white horse with injured hind quarters is found; the horse has a Marianna Station saddle on it. It seems that the horse was shot at, which is why it threw Daniel off.
Sleeper Star: Jay Ryan is Campbell Miller, who bids on the ranch at Daniel’s memorial service and seems to have something going on with Emily.
Most Pilot-y Line: “I think you’re someone else’s mistake,” Graham drunkenly says to Marshall, a not-subtle way of saying that he doesn’t even think Marshall is his biological son.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The first episode of Territory is a bit cluttered with characters and stories, but the sweeping vistas of the Northern Territories, backed by good performances by Torv, Taylor and Dorman make the show very watchable.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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- Stream It Or Skip It
- Territory