TONYA MOSLEY, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. "Landman" is a TV drama whose first episodes have begun airing on Paramount+. It stars Billy Bob Thornton as a savvy oil business veteran who handles things in the field for a Texas mogul. Our critic-at-large John Powers enjoyed the five preview episodes and says that "Landman" is an old-style family soap and a breezy portrait of what may be the most influential industry in the world.
JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: America, it's often said, is a nation of addicts. We're addicted to sugar, to sports, to drugs legal and illegal and, of course, to our many screens. Yet our deepest, most powerful and most pervasive addiction is to oil, the black gold that keeps our society going. This addiction serves as the backdrop to "Landman," a new Paramount+ series from Taylor Sheridan - best known for creating "Yellowstone" - and Christian Wallace, whose hit podcast "Boomtown" served as a loose basis for the series.
Set in the petroleum-rich Permian Basin around Midland, Texas, where the Bush family once went to get rich, this drama centers on an oil company fixer who spends his time solving crises and dealing with his family, who seem to have parachuted into West Texas from a nighttime soap. Billy Bob Thornton stars as Tommy Norris, a once-flush oil man who went broke. He now works as a so-called landman for a billionaire, Monty Miller, played by Jon Hamm in his handsome reptile mode. Tommy's job includes overseeing roughnecks, making sure the wells pump enough, fending off the local drug cartel and handling assorted calamities, like when one of his company's jets gets rammed by an oil truck.
Meanwhile, he's got family issues. Even as his college-age son has decided to work for him as a roughneck, he joins a Latino crew hand-picked by his dad. He's being visited by his 17-year-old daughter, whose idea of higher learning is sleeping with the star quarterback. Yes, we're in the Texas of "Friday Night Lights." The presence of the kids leads his ex-wife, Angela - that's Ali Larter - to fly into Midland, too, bringing with her an array of skimpy outfits, party girl whoops and, though she's remarried, quiet hopes of rekindling their romance.
As if that weren't enough, Tommy wonders if he's being set up to take the fall for some recent accidents. He's wary when his boss sends out a brisk young lawyer, played by Kayla Wallace, who's like a barracuda that bills $900 an hour. She seems to find Tommy, indeed the whole oil business, crude. Here, they visit the site of an oil pump explosion, and, as often happens on "Landman," Tommy explains how things actually work.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "LANDMAN")
KAYLA WALLACE: (As Rebecca Falcone) What can you tell from this?
BILLY BOB THORNTON: (As Tommy Norris) From the well, nothing. From the top, a fire. There was a leak, a roughneck created a spark when he tried to open the valve with a hammer and a wrench.
WALLACE: (As Rebecca Falcone) Why would he try to open it with a hammer?
THORNTON: (As Tommy Norris) 'Cause that's how you open the [expletive] things.
WALLACE: (As Rebecca Falcone) Doesn't seem very safe.
THORNTON: (As Tommy Norris) It's not very safe. That's why they make 180 grand a year.
WALLACE: (As Rebecca Falcone) That's not enough money to risk your life on.
THORNTON: (As Tommy Norris) Yeah, for you, maybe. For a felon with an eighth-grade education, it's a [expletive] lottery ticket.
WALLACE: (As Rebecca Falcone) And for an oil company whose manager knowingly sends employees to faulty wells that violate OSHA standards, it's a nine-figure lawsuit.
THORNTON: (As Tommy Norris) Well, then the whole damn industry's guilty.
POWERS: Hollywood is no stranger to the oil business. Think of "Giant" and "There Will Be Blood." Yet over the decades, pop culture has grown ever less interested in depicting ordinary work and actual working people. So I was pleasantly surprised to realize that "Landman" doesn't focus on oil barons, but on the people involved in the violent task of wresting oil from the Earth and shipping it out by tanker.
It's no surprise that the writer to do this would be Sheridan, who's made a mission of updating our ideas of the modern West. Clearly driven by an old-school work ethic, this is the seventh new show he's created since "Yellowstone" only six years ago. He tells stories that some hip reviewers write off as dad TV. They insist that beneath a few progressive touches, such as his sympathy for the Latino workers in "Landman," he's a sentimental purveyor of traditional values.
Now, I like it that Tommy has a retro air to him. All grizzled expertise, he's a decent man who instinctively sides with the guys on the rigs rather than in the country clubs. He genuinely loves his kids and ex-wife, but he's gentleman enough to remind her that he was a lousy, work-obsessed husband. Played with wry, grouchy warmth by Thornton, Tommy embodies the honorable, sometimes baffled, masculinity that you won't find in a ruthless SOB like Monty Miller, whose only ethical principle is keeping the cost of oil between 76 and $88 a barrel.
While some viewers may be drawn to "Landman" to watch Tommy's wife and daughter flaunt their scantily clad bodies - there's more of this than strictly necessary - the show's true interest lies in the scenes that reveal the Wild West workings of today's oil biz. Here's an industry so vast and profitable that it makes business sense not to report a stolen jet, to build your own highways and cram them with tanker trucks, to simply buy off the families of those killed in unsafe conditions and to find it irrelevant whether fossil fuels are messing up the climate. Like Tommy, "Landman" knows all the things that are wrong about our addiction to oil. But it also hints at the naivete of those who think the world could easily go into rehab.
MOSLEY: John Powers reviewed "Landman," now streaming on Paramount+. On tomorrow's show, John David and Malcolm Washington join me to discuss bringing the August Wilson play "The Piano Lesson" to film on Netflix. It was a family affair, with their sister and father, Denzel Washington, as producers. The two talk candidly about navigating Hollywood and forging a name for themselves outside of their famous father. I hope you can join us.
To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @NPRFreshAir. FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our senior producer today is Sam Briger. Our engineer is Adam Staniszewski. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Lauren Krenzel, Therese Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Anna Bauman. Our digital media producers are Molly Seavy-Nesper and Sabrina Siewert. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tonya Mosley.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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