Seldom has the Wild West seemed so distressingly, violently wild as in American Primeval. Netflix’s new six-part TV show, created by The Revenant screenwriter Mark L Smith and directed by Friday Night Lights’s Peter Berg, was released last week and, despite mixed reviews, has immediately taken viewers by storm. A gory, grounded take on what must be, at this point, the most pored-over slice of US history, American Primeval situates itself in the dust and gunsmoke of the western genre. It follows a mother (GLOW’s Betty Gilpin) and her son (Preston Mota) as they travel across the state, encountering religious fanaticism and brutality.
In the world of cinema, westerns have become a dicey financial proposition; consider, for instance, Kevin Costner’s lavish four-film-franchise Horizon: An American Saga, which released its first entry in cinemas last year, only to be met with paltry interest. (The planned release of the already-filmed second entry was aborted as a result, with a new date yet to be announced.) But away from the big screen, the genre has continued to thrive in pockets – the Costner-fronted neo-western Yellowstone has been one of the biggest shows on television, while period westerns such as Netflix’s Godless, or BBC One’s The English, have shown there’s still life in the old west yet. American Primeval, currently sitting at No 2 in Netflix’s Most Watched charts, makes this yet more evident.
There are a number of smart decisions behind Primeval’s success. The New York Times notes that the west it depicts is not “whitewashed” in the way that westerns traditionally have been. Instead, it is “unwashed – muddy, bloody, cold and mean”, writes critic Alexis Soloski. “In this way, American Primeval joins recent films and series like The English, Meek’s Cutoff, Power of the Dog and Killers of the Flower Moon in repositioning the emphases and priorities of the western.” Then there is the specificity of the setting. The story takes place in 1857, a good few years before most westerns are set. In lieu of the familiar western infrastructure, we get something slightly more primitive; the battle between man and nature is writ larger than ever. The historical truths underpinning the story – for instance, the deadly and horrific Mountain Meadows Massacre, which forms the chaotic, frenzied centrepiece of episode one – are likely little known to much of the show’s audience. Even the choice to filter much of the narrative through female eyes seems a pointed act of realignment.
Perhaps there is some intent to be read into the very title of the series. The word “primeval” is typically used to denote the era at the very dawn of human history – it is a word that conjures images of cavepeople and sabre-toothed tigers, not wagon trails and leather spurs. American Primeval does not depict America’s early pre-history, nor even its early days of colonialist settlement. What does it mean to describe the Old West as America’s Primeval state? It’s likely that Netflix signed off on the title simply because it sounded cool, but there’s a curious suggestion there, one that implies an interesting contemporary relevance.
The greatest of all TV westerns, the David Milch-created drama Deadwood, was, above all, a show about community, about the coming together of people despite the violence, selfishness and crudeness of the west (and of themselves). In some ways, American Primeval feels like the anti-Deadwood; it is a show that makes it seem improbable – miraculous, even – that a peaceful, modern society could ever grow from such a dark seed. But then again, the series seems to suggest… maybe it didn’t.
‘American Primeval’ is streaming on Netflix now
