You will not see a more gorgeous looking program on the small screen this year. The sweeping vistas and skies the shade of blue that your Crayolas actually called, well, Sky Blue, are so stunning that you want to crawl into the screen.
The narrative arc on what the producers call a “Chase Western” isn’t quite as easy to praise, with its sometimes confusing plot and sometimes pokey pacing. In the end, you’ll keep watching for the promise it continually holds, even as it doesn’t fully live up to that potential.
Moving back and forth in time from 1890-ish to the turn of the century in the American west, Emily Blunt is an aristocratic Englishwoman, Lady Cornelia Locke. Cornelia has come to America to avenge the death of her son.
Through an encounter in the first episode, she meets a Pawnee ex-cavalry scout, Eli Whipp (Chaske Spencer), who intends to travel north toward Nebraska to claim some land.
Their journey will be fraught with peril, and we will come to see that Cornelia is no damsel in distress requiring an escort. She can shoot and she can kill.
We know that there is meant to be chemistry between the stern Native American and the Englishwoman, but their early days especially feature curt communication. Spencer is given a bit of a stereotypical quiet, serious Native American sketching (at least he doesn’t speak in Cowboy movie Indian-speak.) His sentences are as short and canned as Sgt. Joe Friday on Dragnet. Extremely written and succinctly delivered.
Blunt is always amazing, right? And she is here, too. Her character is given more of a naturalistic arc and she does a lot with its many phases.
For reasons I’ll leave to the episodes, their mutual destination becomes a new town called Hoxem, Wyoming. It is here we will meet a local sheriff Robert Marshall (Stephen Rea, one of many excellent supporting characters) and a young widow Martha Myers (Valerie Pachner) who are investigating murders and losing a battle against poachers, respectively.
Writer-director Hugo Blick is going for a retro vibe – and by that I mean 1960s/70s Westerns. From the animated opening sequences that are reminiscent of the old Wild Wild West TV show to the graphic violence of, say 1966’s Django.
Alas, there are too many slow burns and not enough fires to merit a higher grade, but the cast, that incredible view, which was shot outside Madrid, Spain, as it turns out, kept me watching for all 6 episodes.
The English premieres in the UK on BBC Two on the November 10th and in the US on Amazon Prime Video on November 11th
