Peter Berg, the Original Taylor Sheridan, Tackles the American Frontier in the Violent 'American Primeval' Trailer

Those of you watching Landman may find it slightly disconcerting how shamelessly it wants to rip off Friday Night Lights. Billy Bob Thornton and Ali Larter are white trash Coach and Tami, and while it’s set in the oil industry, it’s often used to explore class issues. The series — directed frequently by FNL vet Stephen Kay — also brazenly steals the FNL vibes, and Explosions in the Sky ought to be able to sue for how much the music resembles that FNL score. Hell, Matty Saracen’s grandma Louanne Stephens has even appeared in the last couple of episodes. The only time it doesn’t feel like a FNL rip-off is when Jon Hamm is onscreen.

Turnabout is fair play, I suppose, because Peter Berg and Taylor Kitsch — part of the team behind Friday Night Lights — are coming to Netflix next week with American Primeval, which plays in the same sandbox that Taylor Sheridan did in 1883, not that the Oregon Trail hasn’t been ripe for scores of other projects. (To be even more fair, Peter Berg has been tackling working-class America for decades, including Deepwater Horizon, which covered the oil industry from the perspective of oil workers eight years before Landman).

Here, it’s set in the lawless American frontier of 1857 and examines “the violent collision of culture, religion, and community as men and women fight and die for control of this world.” The religion here may be represented by Kim Coates, who plays Brigham Young, and those who might have read Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven know how brutally violent the early Mormons were. There’s a lot of that violence here, plus a cast that not only includes Taylor Kitsch but the exceptional Betty Gilpin, brilliant character actor Shea Wigham, Dane DeHaan, Jai Courtney, and Joe Tippett, a that guy who seems to be everywhere these days (he’s also married to Sara Bareilles).

American Primeval hits Netflix on January 9th.