American Primeval

Kitsch and Gilpin have phenomenal chemistry, and watching how they navigate around their characters’ strengths and flaws, and ultimately make each other whole, is truly a masterclass in performance, direction, and writing.

The wild west never looked so wild, nor as nasty, broken and desolate. Halfway though, I’m engrossed, but also genuinely shocked. Don’t watch it if you can’t take violence. Just don’t.

Tough in every sense, American Primeval is nonetheless worth your time thanks to exceptionally well-choreographed bouts of violence that take an unflinching look at modern America's cruel, savage origins. 

The six episodes present a brutal, fascinating depiction of a culture and a country that has yet to overcome its most violent predilections.

American Primeval could have had better legs as an anthology with loose connective threads. But if you hitch yourself on this bandwagon, this is a wild ride that captures a historical turning point in a relentlessly unflinching watch.

The violence is unrelenting, thanks to director Peter Berg. Yet the series feels pacy and the brutality of what we’re seeing doesn’t make for an unbearably bleak viewing experience, because it is tempered by placing two female characters at the heart of the drama.

Berg throws dirty, cold water onto any romantic notion about the Wild West and that might put some off. If you’re one of them, stick with “Yellowstone” instead. But if you were a fan of “The Revenant” (Smith wrote it), this addictive series needs to make it way into your queue.

Lives up to its name on every level. This is one of the grittiest, grimiest, bloodiest and most chaotic Westerns in recent memory — a bone-rattling and visceral experience that escalates the tension level from episode to episode and plunges us deep into the mud and muck of the 1850s, and the fierce clashes of culture and religion that result in terrible slaughter at every turn.

American Primeval is an unsparing look at a segment of the American West in the 1850s that pretty much saw conflict, blood and death every single day. It’s certainly bleak, but it also reflects what it was really like for people heading West at that time, and why survival was probably their greatest achievement.

It’s good — beautifully produced, with evident dedication to cultural detail, full of interesting if not always palatable characters acted with commitment. .... The question is, are you interested in living in this mostly unpleasant space for something like six hours? One might even say that the series succeeds by being difficult to watch. (I don’t recommend bingeing it in any case; it’s exhausting.) There is an emotional payoff at the end, if you’re not too numb to appreciate it, but it takes some hard traveling to get there.

An all-star ensemble and compelling historical setting aren’t ultimately enough to pin down such a sprawling epic, especially when it’s being told with such distracting camerawork. Given either more economic storytelling or more time – and less frenetic frames – Netflix could’ve really struck gold.