With several upcoming Yellowstone shows on his creative deck, Taylor Sheridan’s next TV offering, the anthology-sparking Lawmen: Bass Reeves, comes from the dedicated efforts of star and executive producer David Oyelowo and creator Chat Feehan. The Paramount+ original released its first official trailer, as seen above, and I think everyone watching will agree it looks like it’ll stand proudly next to 1883 as another powerful and pulse-pounding frontier tale on the streaming platform. And Oyelowo’s badassery cannot be denied, even alongside the entirety of the Dutton family tree.
Anyone who isn’t already familiar with the legend of real-life Deputy U.S. Marshal Bass Reeves is in for quite an education, although everyone who is familiar will also be entertained, as Lawmen is covering the full storytelling gamut. It’s been a years-in-the-making passion project for Oyelowo to bring some form of Reeves’ story to the screen, and he naturally commands the shit out of the screen anytime he’s featured.
The trailer features flashbacks of Reeves’ days as a criminal-thwarting federal peace officer in Arkansas, as well as his present-day tale (so to speak), in which he’s enlisted as a Deputy U.S. Marshal by Donald Sutherland’s domineering Judge Parker. To overly generalize things, the show focuses on David Oyelowo’s character tracking bad guys and shutting shit down with a team of fellow badasses on horseback, such as Dennis Quaid’s Marshal Sherrill Lynn and Barry Pepper’s Esau Pierce.
Pepper’s grizzled character looks like he knows a million ways to skin someone alive, which kinda runs counter to the emotion-dampening stoicism that Reeves brings. As a Black authority figure during that time period, there wasn’t much room to show any amount of weakness, and the performance delivers in full on that front. Not that he isn’t showing some emotion when using an assortment of weapons to take down thieves and other ne'er-do-wells, but those moments only get teased out in tiny pieces.
I’d be remiss if I showered all the praise on Oyelowo (who shares co-producing honors with wife Jessica Oyelowo) without spreading those props out to also include co-star Lauren E. Banks (City on a Hill) as Jennie Reeves, who clearly knows how to hold her own ground in the face of seemingly certain doom at the gnarled hands of a group of hooded white folk. “Then I’ll just shoot you twice, just to be safe,” gets all the snaps and pops and crackles. He best get off that woman’s land before his last thought ends up splattered across his buddies’ hoods.
Let’s give it up for that dude who was totally on fire in there, too. Because that’s gotta suck.
Along with the new trailer, Lawmen: Bass Reeves creator Chad Feehan shared a message that pointed out exactly why he’s at the show’s helm, from a Texas childhood fascination with the stories, to crossing paths with the fervent David Oyelowo, to a renewed thrust of research. And here’s how he explained what all that effort and energy became:
Our story explores the lawman, the husband, the father; it begins with enslavement and carries through Reconstruction to the first cruel whispers of Jim Crow; it contains some of the well-known tales, some of the untold tales and a fair share of fictional tales that fill-in the in-between. But more than anything, David, I and many others sought to tell a story about the human condition and its undeniable universality, the emotionality that connects all of us.
The original release plan for Bass Reeves was as a second season of 1883, which otherwise doesn’t appear to be continuing. But plans changed down the line, as the idea became more about celebrating the lawmen of yesteryear, without the need to tether the story to the Yellowstone universe. I wouldn’t have hated seeing some connective tissue between these worlds, as ridiculous as that might be where real-world people are concerned. I suppose it could still happen, though, so I’m keeping hope alive to see someone in the Dutton clan marveling at how much of a badass Oyelowo is.
Lawmen: Bass Reeves is set to begin streaming on Sunday, November 5, with its first two episodes available for everyone with a Paramount+ subscription. Head to our 2023 TV premiere schedule to see what other new and returning shows are galloping towards us next.
