1883

This series has to be one of the best television series ever made for tv.

Besides how accurate it seems in relation to the struggle of the pioneers founding the country, or the love between family and how to survive a wild frontier, it demonstrates how perseverance and dreams can propel a person to do things seemingly impossible.

The writing and direction in this series has to be some of the best I've seen in a very long time.

My only hope is that it gets recognized for this in the upcoming awards seasons and that there is a second season... however unlikely that might be, considering they already have the 1923 series as a sequel.

This recently became available, all ten episodes, on a set of four DVDs. I found the set at my public library. There is a scene in the first episode, as a large group of people and wagons are gathering, for their trek to the North and West. They are gathering on the Trinity River outside Fort Worth, Texas, and one person is offering condolences for the husband's death. She responds, "You can't believe in Heaven then be sad when people go there." I had never heard it put that way before.

As the end credits on each episode states, the stories were "inspired" by events of the 1880s as people from Eastern areas began to move out west. Many wanted to go to specific places, like Oregon or Washington. But some just wanted to go someplace new and figured they'd know it when they see it. As was the Dutton family from the woods of Tennessee. The stories portrayed had input from historians and are largely authentic to the time and the travels to settle the West.

I didn't see "Yellowstone" season four but the DVD extras talk about flashbacks that were the inspiration for "1883", intended to be the origin story of how the Dutton clan ended up settling where they did in Montana.

The 1880s as portrayed here are rough and dangerous. Steal a wallet and you might be hanged and shot. If you are found with small pox you are banished and you might as well find a nice river bank and lie down and wait to die. Traveling was dangerous, bands of thieves or aggressive Native tribes might steal your horses, kill you and scalp you and your family. Yet they persisted. Many perished along the way, some made it.

It is overall a big investment in time to watch all ten episodes but I did it over a week and found it to be a totally captivating and worthwhile show. A few extras on the 4-disc DVD set show a number of interesting "making of" features.

I quit watching Yellowstone because any semblance of humanity was gone on the show. Everyone simply tried to one-up the other for how ruthless and evil they could be. John Dutton and family are no better than any criminal element portrayed on the show. It became for me, a prime time soap opera.

Having said that the prequel 1883 is anything but. It is extremely well written and acted and beside people having beautiful write teeth and perfect complexions, I feel it accurately depicts the life that these pioneers experienced. The actors seem so natural in their roles, indicating a lot of effort has been taken to make it appear as authentic as possible. The writing is very good and in a much larger sense gets you into the psyche of a family who would knowingly enter into this arrangement to travel the Oregon Trail, knowing the risk. Life previously had to be hell in order for them to risk it all on a journey like this. I think the writing and dialog help to get the background as to why someone would take such drastic measures to try to find a better life.

It is so well done that I can only watch one episode at a time since each one is so full of emotion that it takes a minute to process.

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill are surprisingly good and believable as a pioneering couple. The rest of the cast is terrific. The narration by the Dutton daughter really pulls it together.

Sam Elliott was born to play this role. He is fantastic!!! Just simply fantastic! Reminds me in some ways of when I watched Lonesome Dove and how I felt about Duvall and Jones, more so Duvall. I can't quite picture anyone else playing this part.

I hope 1923 is just as good.

I really liked this show, but their excessively white teeth - even on the Indians! - distracted me a lot. Every single character should have worn fake YELLOW teeth, and half the cast - especially those over 50 - should have had several missing teeth.

If a director is going for authenticity, he should go all the way. He went to a lot of trouble getting most things right, so why make this glaring error? It was difficult to concentrate on the dialog when those pearly whites were blinding me.

Also, why didn't Elsa ever wash her clothes? She slept in them so it appeared she never actually took them off except for the one bath she and her mother took in the river. She probably smelled worse than an outhouse.

This could have been fascinating history told in its raw form. Unfortunately, the show loses its identity at certain points through out the season. The show focuses on settlers emigrating the Oregon trail and challenges they face. It then, starts to mix in narrations by a teenage girl named Elsa and her teenage drama issues. At certain points in the show I'm getting confused at who the target audience is? I felt if the writing was a consistent story towards the emigration of settlers it would have been more successful. Instead we are plagued with a mixture of teenage drama issues which becomes tedious to watch at times.