Source : the age
The Madison ★★
Who hates the city of New York more? Iran’s Revolutionary Guards or Taylor Sheridan?
That is one of several unexpected questions posed by The Madison, the latest series from Sheridan, the prolific creator of Yellowstone, Landman, and Lioness. His new show may nominally be about grief and healing, but its disdain for NYC borders on zealotry. The city, on Sheridan’s show, harbours horrible people, rampant street crime and political correctness, and lacks fly-fishing opportunities.
Somehow, despite living in a penthouse thanks to massive Wall Street-related earnings, Preston and Stacy Clyburn (Kurt Russell and Michelle Pfeiffer), have remained good people. Their children and grandchildren? Completely infected. Preston’s balm is his holidays with his widowed brother, Paul (Matthew Fox), at their ranch in Montana’s Madison River Valley. They fly-fish, admire the magnificent landscape, and decry “that city”. Stacy and the family never visited, due to her aversion for using an outhouse.
That all changes when the brothers, on their way back from a rare fly-fishing spot, perish in an accident. Flung into grief, Stacy comes to the ranch, along with her extended family, to not just bury Preston, but to understand what he loved. They are coastal elites detoxing amidst the unsullied nature of the true America. It’s not easy. “What spoiled little bitches we’ve raised,” Stacy soon declares.
It’s important to note this is a very different Montana to that of Yellowstone. The Dutton clan were constantly involved in conflicts, but in The Madison’s corner it’s peaceful, the locals are solicitous, and even the county bureaucrats are unfailingly helpful. The storytelling is a kind of magical realism for traditional conservatives. Characters still give corrective lectures, as Sheridan voices are wont to do, but the topic is gluten instead of oil. Preston, present in flashbacks set around his fly-fishing schedule, is deified.
Russell takes this patriarchal portrayal in his stride, but Pfeiffer is exceptional in bringing a sharp emotional edge to Stacy’s loss. Whatever Sheridan writes, Pfeiffer elevates. Her anger is genuinely lacerating, even when it’s directed inwards, because Stacy was too much of a New Yorker to grant the stoic Preston his Montana dream. Pfeiffer’s performance and director Christina Alexandra Voros’ landscape compositions are impressive.
Sheridan gives the characters what he thinks they deserve. Stacy’s divorced oldest daughter and mother of two girls, Abigail (Beau Garrett), meets a sheriff’s deputy who is tender and philosophical, while the insufferable blonde younger daughter, Paige (Elle Chapman), gets stung by hornets – in that outhouse – just to emphasise she is literally a pain in the arse. That’s as subtle as The Madison gets.
The Madison is now streaming on Paramount+.
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Craig Mathieson is a TV, film and music writer for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via X.
