Outer Range

An economy of dialogue and a protraction of plot serve Outer Range well, as the mystery of the big spooky hole in the Abbotts’ west pasture isn’t the point of the series so much as its psychological fulcrum.

For a show to embrace the strange elements of the cosmos and intertwine them with everyday life as well as Outer Range does is worth praising for that alone. It is both creative and cathartic, revealing much about the family at its center even as it finds splendor in the overwhelming awe of the unknown.

It’s impossible to touch on every nook and cranny of “Outer Range” without spoiling its surprises. Just know that every corner holds a secret, that every metaphysical query leads toward a more puzzling mystery. And yet, the emotional weight of the show never gets bogged down by reveals.

"Outer Range" certainly corrals one's attention, wrangling a herd of plotlines into just the first of eight episodes. ... The creator of "Outer Range," newcomer Brian Watkins, is clearly striving for a gothic-in-the-great-outdoors atmosphere and is successful at it, even without the portal.

Always weird, sometimes annoying, but frequently fascinating, Outer Range has Yellowstone's same sense of a cowboy family unaware that it has lived out its time—but in this case, the encroachment is not being done by modernity, but something antediluvian that's returned for a possession it left behind.

What meaning does anything hold next to the nothing of oblivion? The question courses through Outer Range, an alluring exploration of lives and lands that have been all but annihilated.

The show is mostly about how the hole’s very presence affects the Abbotts and the Tillersons, and the way their animus ripples down through generations. Its ambitions are subtle but powerful, and I can’t wait to see how deep the rabbit hole goes in future seasons.

This is a series that drops in hints and clues and moments of foreshadowing in sometimes frustratingly small doses (we want answers, now!), but when the reveals do come, we’re shocked and delighted, and somehow all the madness begins to make some kind of sense.

With no promise that more Outer Range is coming, some will find it worrisome. But if you can appreciate what you've taken in and can recognize the potential for something truly great ahead, you'll find Outer Range worth the confusion.

Quirky, strange, dark — and engaging.

Flashes of dark humor and just plain surrealness keep the show from stalling, but it's a slow burn with many burning questions. Throughout the crowding subplots, it's hard not to think: Can we just get back to that giant hole in the ground, please?

None of these plots need a supernatural twist to keep them compelling, try though “Outer Range” might. At its best, then, the series only uses the void to imbue its more grounded themes — grief, loneliness, faith, longing — with a palpable eeriness. ... Where “Outer Range” falters, then, is when it threatens to get lost in the mythology of the void, a problem personified in a single character. ... While Poots does her best to make Autumn as mesmerizing as the scripts insist she is, most every scene revolving around her ends up dragging the show down.

While the family story and conflicts with the neighboring Tillersons — you know they’re bad news because they ride ATVs and the Abbotts ride horses – feels overly familiar, credit series creator/writer Brian Watkins with building to shocks at the end of the first two episodes that leave viewers eager to learn what will happen next.

Despite the promise of a stunning natural setting and a big ol’ hole to throw things into, Watkins can’t quite come into his own. Even as the soapy interpersonal stories ramp up, there’s a nagging feeling Outer Range never goes far enough.

Outer Range has one of the worst momentum problems I've ever seen in a streaming show, squandering an evocative setting and some fun twists on portentous take-forever storytelling that prioritizes hints over character depth.

A lot of people do good work on “Open Range.” If only it provided a little more to hold onto.

Outer Range has expansive scenery (when it can be seen), and decent performances from Brolin, Taylor, and Poots. But neither its family drama and supernatural elements are compelling enough to make up for the show’s slow pace.

The eye-catching visuals only serve to remind us of the lack of magnetism elsewhere, the show trying to say something about fate, faith and family but falling short on profundity on all counts.

Outer Range is a lumbering, self-serious hodgepodge of sci-fi and modern Western. Brolin and Poots have, to their credit, bought into the premise of a magical realist love letter to the passing into history of a certain idea of American self-sufficiency. Audiences, though, may find Outer Range more drab than fab – epic only in its drawn-out running time and crying out for a close encounter with a cattle prod.

Perhaps the most infuriating thing about Outer Range, and there are a lot of infuriating things about it, is how almost nobody on-screen is asking any of the questions that audiences will be asking. ... In addition to the generally likable Podemski and Brolin — whose gravitas gives the series an air of legitimacy that, frankly, it doesn’t deserve — the show’s best performances come from Ozark breakout Pelphrey.

“Outer Range” is a complete mess: Senseless, pretentious, purposely obscure and wasteful.