OUTER RANGE Season One
Way Out West
UK/US Prime Video, all streaming now Creator Brian Watkins
Cast Josh Brolin, Imogen Poots,
Lili Taylor, Tom Pelphrey
It’s less “Home On The Range” and more “Hole On The Range” in this oddball show, which brings high weirdness to rural Wyoming.
Josh Brolin is Royal Abbott, grandfather of a family of cattle ranchers, who discovers a bottomless void on his land – one which can act as a portal to other times and places. It’s not his only problem. His daughter-in-law went missing nine months ago. His neighbours, the Tillersons, have staked a claim to the pasture containing the hole. Then his son
Perry gets into a fight with a Tillerson, leaving a corpse to be disposed of. It’s a right Royal mess.
There are two tones at work, and the tension between them is very interesting. Often the series is in realist mode, depicting a timeless world of good ol’ boy bars, Sunday communion and rodeo tournaments. Then it’ll turn mystic/cosmic, or throw in quirky characterisation. There’s a Twin Peaks tinge to the way Billy Tillerson (Noah Reid) incongruously belts out hits like “Save The Best For Last” and the wild-eyed monologues his sickly father (Will Patton) launches into. Lost is another touchstone, with an ominous buffalo as the series’ polar bear. Brolin is a strong gravitational centre as the grizzled patriarch, whose close-mouthed nature makes scenes where he breaks down doubly poignant.
It’s a beautifully crafted series, full of stunning vistas and dreamily slow transitions. And hats off to the music coordinator, who drops in cuts by the likes of Scott Walker, Moondog and Kris Kristofferson.
Sci-fi fans may find Abbott’s lack of interest in investigating further frustrating. But a brilliant penultimate-episode twist makes sense of that. With a finale rug-pull providing another strong hook, and the void’s potential barely explored, it’s a show which should seduce anyone with a taste for classic Americana or Lynchian weirdness.
The local cinema is showing obscure 1970 film The Phantom Tollbooth – about a gateway to an enchanted kingdom.