“People have told me grace is a given thing, and if you seek it, you’ll find it,” rancher Royal Abbott (Josh Brolin) says in a monologue about faith, God, and his difficult upbringing at one point in Amazon’s superb, thrilling and moody new series, “The Outer Range,” created and written by Brian Watkins, and produced by Brad Pitt’s tasteful Plan B production company. Abbott tells a tale about the world as a “bright place,” but when tragedy struck his life as a young boy, “the world went black, and then it hit me that God is everything good and everything bad.” And it’s this unknowable, unfathomable notion and leap of faith that so many of us struggle with—if there’s a God, why does he let terrible things happen?—that colors much of Watkins’ spiritual, mysterious, and deeply unique series.
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Set in the immense ranch lands of Wyoming, “The Outer Range” may appear as something like “Yellowstone” on the surface—rugged, taciturn men unable to express their feelings, conflicting family dynamics, and struggles to keep the rights to one’s land—but there are eerie, transformative mysteries on its edges that transcend tangible, graspable ideas. Perhaps even borrowing some of Krzysztof Kieślowski’s porous, intermingling ideas of time, spirituality, and fate, “The Outer Range” hews closer to something more incorporeal, metaphysical, and dazzlingly captivating, like an artier version of “The Twilight Zone” set in the heartland.
While one could call it blended genre, Watkins’ series is ultimately complex and sophisticated, a Western with cowboys that’s also a bruising emotional family drama, filled with little tragedies, that happens to have an eerie, mystical element that begins to fray its already fraught edges. Either way, there’s a lot going on inside this series about family loyalties, estrangements, and traumas that echo through time.
In “The Outer Range,” there’s much suffering and pain to contend with on top of deeper, darker secrets that yield even more past emotional damages. As the family struggles to keep their ranch and land, the series begins with the Abbott family coping with the disappearance of Rebecca, Royal’s daughter-in-law, wife of his son Perry Abbott (Tom Pelphrey). It’s been nine months since Rebecca vanished without a trace. While some have suspected foul play, Deputy Sheriff Joy (Tamara Podemski) has no objective evidence to suggest anything concrete either way, leading to rumors Rebecca walked out on her family. As the family tries to survive in their various ways—Royal’s wife, Cecilia Abbott (Lily Taylor), leans into God, their younger son, the aspiring rodeo star Rhett Abbott (Lewis Pullman), is empathetic but displaced from it all, and Perry’s daughter Amy Abbott (Olive Abercrombie) tries to help her silently anguished father — a quiet sadness pervades the household, while life keeps moving on.
The nearby Tillerson family is a point of contention and rivalry. Rich, influential, adjacent to their property, the ailing patriarch Wayne Tillerson (Will Patton), has always sneered down on the blue-collar Abbotts, and already burdened tensions begin to rise when the Tillersons start making a play for their land. But something even more troubling is on the horizon: strange, eerie moans and thundering across the plains. Compelled to investigate, when Royal reaches the spot of spooky, spectral emanations, he finds an enigmatic dark hole in the middle of his acres. Dropping objects into the hole, it doesn’t seem to adhere to concepts like sound and gravity. It’s clearly not of this earth. Deeply troubled by its existence, Royal keeps it all secret.
Booze is a coping mechanism for all—whether it’s boredom for regular folk or a way to manage for the still-grieving Abbotts. One night, the obnoxious Tillerson boys, Billy (Noah Reid), Luke (Shaun Sipos), and Trever Tillerson (Matt Lauria), run afoul of Perry. And when Perry is goaded with a nasty barb about his missing wife, an accidental tragedy strikes, born out of rage. In their terrified, rattled alarm, the Abbotts bring the body of Trevor Tillerson back to the ranch and to their father Royal: he’ll know what to do.
Understanding the severity of the inadvertent crime and feeling like Perry’s been through enough, Royal, in a fit of despair and hopelessness, drives the body in his truck out to the hole and dumps it inside. And what ensues becomes an intriguing mix of detective procedural laced with obfuscation, guilt, and desperation — Deputy Sheriff Joy investigating the sudden disappearance of Trevor, the Abbot family trying to hide their culpability — power struggles (the Abbotts vs. the suspicious Tillersons), and enigmatic mystery (the hole on the edge on the outer limits of their land and what it all means).
All of this doesn’t even contend with Autumn (a terrific Imogen Poots, finally with a substantial role worthy of her talents), a free-spirited backpacker who pays to stay and camp on the Abbott’s land for a few weeks. Her secrets begin to slowly unspool too. Is she a trust-fund kid? Is she suffering from mental illness? Her cagey and confrontational manner soon begins to vex Royal and sets the two of them on a collision course.
To say more about the bottomless black hole itself, its incomprehensible properties, and what its possibilities are is to get too far into spoilers, but suffice it to say, its inscrutabilities are as vast as the lands around it.
Artfully crafted with great suspense and pacing that makes for an addictive bingewatch, some of its best episodes of intrigue are directed by filmmakers like Amy Seimetz (“She Dies Tomorrow”) and Mexican helmer Alonso Ruizpalacios (“A Cop Movie,” “Güeros”). That tasteful craft extends to many departments. Notable indie composers Danny Bensi and Saunder Jurriaans (“Enemy”) write the unnerving, creepy score, and its group of outstanding cinematographers speaks to the moody atmospherics the show provides. The list includes Drew Daniels of “Waves” and “Red Rocket,” Adam Newport-Berra, known for “The Last Black Man in San Francisco,” and “Euphoria,” and Seimetz brings her own DP Jay Keitel (“Sun Don’t Shine”) for her episodes.
Refreshingly, as somber as ‘Outer Range’ can be at times, it also has a great sense of humor and can be surprisingly funny and absurdist at times (Noah Reid is tremendous in this regard). Psychologically, it can cover religious fervor, mental health, mania, and emotional hysteria and never loses its way tonally. While seemingly better suited to a mini-series shape—it’s challenging to do shadowy sci-fi without quickly turning into the worst parts of “Lost” or the “X-Files”— “The Outer Range” earns its cliffhanger ending, its big emotional reveals, and surprising but convincing twists. Moreover, it strikes a perfect balance, never losing sight of its family anguishes, its darker obscurities, and how they all tie together.
“I don’t want grace; I just want my family back,” Royal says near the end of the season, at the end of his rope. “The Outer Range” may be a damaged family drama with the catchy hook of inexplicable, uncanny genre, but its most profound and moving qualities may be its ideas of faith and meaning and what happens when the unexplainable shatters what’s left of your beliefs. [A]