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1923 partners Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren as ranch owners Jacob and Cara Dutton, with cattle aplenty, but everything’s being affected by drought and a plague of locusts.
The series serves as a prequel to Yellowstone, currently in Season 5, and a sequel to 1883. For me, I haven’t seen either, but was drawn to this from the presence of the two leads, but 1883’s Elsa Durron (Isabel May) narrates the story at the start, stating that her father had three children, only one of which would live to see their own children grown, and carry the family through the Depression. Cue Mr Ford.
We’re told that upon her father’s death, her mother wrote to his brother, asking him to bring his family to the land to save it (and so much relative denominations being mentioned that I started to lose track a bit, and had to replay this part). He arrived a year later, found her mother dead, and raised her sons as his own, built an empire, which then crumbled…
As for why it took him so long to come? Maybe there was a postal strike 😉
Beyond that, we have Cara chasing after a man, aiming to kill him with a shotgun – although to be fair, I’m not sure who the man is, then son Spencer (Brandon Sklenar), a former World War I soldier, now hunting leopards and lions in Nairobi, Africa, also referring to the former creature as “a leopard the sized of a sofa”. Would they really use that word 100 years ago?
Amongst the issues of the day, there’s consternation about who’s killing the sheep, plus farmer Banner Creighton’s (Jerome Flynn) upset his sheep have been killed because his sheep went onto the wrong ground, and there’s a separate story reminding me of The Blues Brothers, as Sister Alice (Kerry O’Malley) is slapping a student six ways from Sunday with a ruler, until the student decides she’s had enough… and rightly so!
However, quite frankly, 1923 is such slow going and I’m really not taking to it after one episode. Perhaps Paramount should’ve made at least two episodes available from day one, so it could give more of a context to the story?
A lot of the time, it’s a bunch of poeple shouting at each other, except Harrison Ford who just “GRRRRRR”s a lot. However, it’ll probably be a lot better than Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny…
1923 is not available to pre-order on Blu-ray or DVD, but is on Paramount+ from Monday November 14th, showing weekly.
Detailed specs:
Cert: 
Running time: 60 minutes per episode (8 episodes, weekly)
Release date: December 19th 2022
Studio: Paramount+
Format: 2.39:1
Director: Ben Richardson
Producer: Rajeev Malhotra
Creator/Writer: Taylor Sheridan
Music: Brian Tyler, Breton Vivian
Cast:
Jacob Dutton: Harrison Ford
Cara Dutton: Helen Mirren
Spencer Dutton: Brandon Sklenar
Jack Dutton: Darren Mann
Elizabeth Strafford: Michelle Randolph
John Dutton Sr: James Badge Dale
Emma Dutton: Marley Shelton
Zane Davis: Brian Geraghty
Teonna: Aminah Nieves
Alexandra: Julia Schlaepfer
Banner Creighton: Jerome Flynn
Dennis: Caleb Martin
Jasper: Brian Brown
Father Renaud: Sebastian Roché
Sister Alice: Kerry O’Malley
Clyde: Brian Konowal
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.