“Marshals” is a new kind of “Yellowstone” spinoff. Rather than a prequel series tracing the Dutton family back through generations of Western migration and conflicts over land, it’s a contemporary show following an actual “Yellowstone” character — Kayce Dutton (Luke Grimes), youngest son of deceased patriarch John (Kevin Costner) — past the events of the flagship show. And rather than a streaming series boasting lavish period detail and movie stars like Harrison Ford, “Marshals” is a network law enforcement procedural that bears only a passing family resemblance to “1923,” “1883,” “Yellowstone” or even other shows in executive producer Taylor Sheridan’s sprawling portfolio.
For starters, “Marshals” is the extremely rare Sheridan show not created by Sheridan himself, a notoriously hands-on writer who once claimed to have no idea what a script coordinator does. (The show was originally called “Y: Marshals,” but shed the explicit tie-in along the way.) Instead, the CBS series is merely “based on characters created by” Sheridan and “Yellowstone” co-creator John Linson and led primarily by Spencer Hudnut, whose credits include “SEAL Team” and “The Blacklist: Redemption.” “Marshals” is as much in line with Hudnut’s résumé as it is with Sheridan’s mega-popular neo-Western, often reductively but not-totally-inaccurately described as “red state ‘Succession.’” Compared to such serialized dramas, “Marshals” has the lowered production value and case-of-the-week structure of more meat-and-potatoes broadcast fare, i.e. the Eye’s stock and trade. “Yellowstone” has shifted shapes to fit its new habitat.
