15 TV Shows To Watch If You Like The Yellowstone Spin-Off Dutton Ranch

If one thing is true about the current landscape of television, it’s that we’re hardly hurting for new Taylor Sheridan dramas. “Dutton Ranch” is just the latest of his sprawling “Yellowstone” saga — a franchise for which, if the spin-off happens to be your entry point, you already have several series’ worth of homework to catch up on. For longtime fans, the bigger question is what to watch between new episodes.

The story of Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler (Kelly Reilly and Cole Hauser) is, of course, part of a wide canon of neo-Western dramas and Old West tales, divided by decades but united by common historical fixations, morally complicated character archetypes, and broader themes of land ownership, family loyalty, and personal justice. Some lean heavily into frontier realism, while others swap horses for pickup trucks and crime syndicates, but all of them share the same fascination with power, legacy, and survival. With these qualities in mind, TVLine has constructed the perfect watchlist for fans of “Dutton Ranch” that ranges from 19th-century frontier dramas to prestige crime thrillers set in the modern day.

As fans of “Dutton Ranch” are hopefully aware, there are several other Taylor Sheridan-produced spin-offs of “Yellowstone” that are currently included with your Paramount+ subscription. The one “Yellowstone” spin-off we strongly recommended to the broader “Dutton Ranch” viewership is “1883.”

The first of Sheridan’s expansions to the “Yellowstone” franchise, there are plenty of reasons why “1883” might be your jam. The prequel series is arguably the most narratively symmetrical in-universe companion to “Dutton Ranch.” While “Dutton Ranch” follows the family’s modern-day descendants as they leave Montana for Texas, “1883” follows the generation of Duttons that founded the ranch by traveling from Texas to Montana in the late 19th century. The 2021 miniseries stars Tim McGraw and Faith Hill as the great-grandparents of Kevin Costner’s character from the original series; Sam Elliott plays the former Union Army captain leading them and the rest of their hopeful wagon train toward new lives and fresh land.

More than any of the other spin-offs, “1883” and “Dutton Ranch” serve as effective thematic bookends to “Yellowstone.” The former establishes the mythos that shapes — for better and worse — both the land and the family that controls it throughout “Yellowstone,” while the latter asks how that family might evolve beyond the ranch itself.

It’s fairly easy (and common) to make the argument that we wouldn’t have most of the western television shows we now enjoy without the groundwork laid by Larry McMurtry’s 1985 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “Lonesome Dove” or William D. Wittliff’s 1989 miniseries adaptation for CBS. A far more direct consequence of those works — at least according to Taylor Sheridan himself — is his entire career as a storyteller and, by extension, “Dutton Ranch” and the broader “Yellowstone” franchise.

Like “1883,” “Lonesome Dove” follows a journey from Texas to Montana in the latter half of the 19th century. The all-star cast is led by Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall. Jones plays a cattle driver intent on starting a new ranch up north, while Duvall plays his reluctant business partner, who believes the journey may finally lead him not to fortune, but to love in the form of his former flame Clara, played by Anjelica Huston. The balance of cattle economics, romantic tension, stubborn individualism, and an elegiac deconstruction of frontier myths is basically the dramatic DNA of “Dutton Ranch” nurtured a century into the past. Both characters are former Texas Rangers, giving them the same rugged, often rigid but conflicted morality shared by many of Sheridan’s heroes — most notably Rip Wheeler.

Suffice it to say, “Lonesome Dove” remains one of the greatest and most influential western series of all time. Sheridan himself acknowledged that influence in 2025 when he wrote the foreword for the novel’s 40th anniversary edition, recalling how the 1989 miniseries inspired him to imagine his own adaptation and ultimately pursue storytelling.

When it comes to landmark westerns “Yellowstone” fans might have missed, “Deadwood” arguably remains the standard for the genre with regard to its portrayal in 21st-century television. Yes, Taylor Sheridan’s work has far surpassed the HBO series in popularity, cultural reach, and longevity. “Yellowstone” has become a seemingly unstoppable franchise in its eighth year, while “Deadwood” was famously canceled after just three seasons before finally receiving a concluding TV movie more than a decade later.

And yet, despite being overshadowed in these ways, “Deadwood” still looms larger over the genre than most series, for reasons that will quickly be apparent to fans of “Dutton Ranch.” Timothy Olyphant and Ian McShane star as fictionalized versions of real Old West figures Seth Bullock and Al Swearengen. The gravitational dynamic between the two men — one an upstanding sheriff resisting the amoral bent of the titular town; the other a venal business proprietor who steps outside the law for personal gain — is a masterful predecessor to the moral tension at the heart of most western lawmen stories. The complexity will be especially appreciated by “Dutton Ranch” fans, as Al serves as something of a dramatic ancestor to Annette Bening’s Beulah Jackson.

Speaking of Beulah Jackson, part of what makes “Dutton Ranch” more compelling than a standard “Yellowstone” spin-off are the women at the center of the story. Even in the neo-western genre, female characters tend to have a diminutive role compared to their male counterparts, especially when it comes to their agency and activity within customarily dangerous storylines — not so in “Dutton Ranch,” nor in the 2017 Netflix miniseries “Godless.”

One of the many great series buried within Netflix’s massive content catalog, “Godless” takes place in a small New Mexico mining town devastated by a collapse that killed most of its male residents. The widows are left to defend their land and livelihood from outside threats, in particular the terrifying outlaw Frank Griffin (a criminally underrated performance from Jeff Daniels). In many ways, it’s a structural mirror to the conflict driving “Dutton Ranch,” where Beth is forced to defend herself against Beulah after losing nearly everything in the “Yellowstone” series finale.

We’ve long championed “Hell on Wheels” as a tremendous western series for fans of the “Yellowstone” universe. It engages with all the core themes of the franchise — corporate expansion and encroachment, the historical legacy of cultural land disputes in America, personal justice versus social progress — but in a distinctly postbellum setting that gives it an entirely unique tone.

It’s an especially strong choice for “Dutton Ranch” fans partial to Rip Wheeler. Anson Mount’s performance as Cullen Bohannon exists in a similar register — quiet, judiciously violent, adhering to a personal moral code that, while outside that of the general audience, is still emotionally legible. The series centers on Cullen, a former Confederate soldier, as he uses his position on the Transcontinental Railroad project to hunt down the Union soldiers who killed his wife and child during the war. Cullen and Rip are dangerous men whose desire to focus on immediate threats and material concerns makes them unpredictable actors when thrust into (or against) the grand schemes of industrial expansion.

Throughout the “Yellowstone” franchise — especially in “Dutton Ranch” — contemporary business practices are treated as modernity’s attempt to put a civilized patina over the antisocial barbarism that marked earlier stages of humanity. That conflict is one of the franchise’s defining themes, even if it’s often overlooked. The foundational tragedy of “Dutton Ranch” is that an act of nature — the very thing which the civilized society and the business people like the Duttons rebel against (within the show’s existential logic) — robs them of that cover, and puts them on a regressive path away from the peaceful lives Beth and Rip were attempting to lead.

This is explored exceptionally in “The Son,” a lesser-known series that depicts the conflict between past and present more literally, in a story told through two timelines that the audience experiences in parallel. In 1849, Eli McCullough — played by future “Landman” actor Jacob Lofland — is kidnapped and raised by the Comanche people who murdered his family. In 1915, an older Eli, played by Pierce Brosnan, is a powerful rancher and emerging oil baron with a prosperous family. As dangerous rivals and new business ventures require more ruthlessness of the apparently distinguished cattle baron, his violent past threatens to define what remains of his future.

Moving to the modern age of the neo-Western, there’s no better place to start than one of the genre’s best byproducts — the A&E drama “Longmire.” It deserves special recognition, especially within the context of Taylor Sheridan’s own neo-Westerns, as it helped define how the genre’s tropes work in the service of the kind of procedural storytelling harnessed by the “Yellowstone” franchise at large. For example, when Rip uncovers a dead body buried on his land in “Dutton Ranch,” the moment stylistically and narratively echoes “Longmire.” Subtle as that may sound, fans of both series will recognize the familiar atmosphere both series create through moments like this.

“Longmire” follows the troubled sheriff of a fictional county in Wyoming (played by Robert Taylor) that borders an Indigenous reservation. It may feel more episodic than “Dutton Ranch” at first, but its slow-burn seasonal arcs reward attentive viewers in much the same way Sheridan’s shows do.

You simply cannot discuss any show within the neo-western genre without paying tribute to FX’s “Justified.” Plenty of shows, including “Longmire,” have only come close to mastering the procedural crime drama/Western mix that this Timothy Olyphant-led masterpiece indisputably perfected. It’s the kind of series Taylor Sheridan’s “Marshals” likely hopes to emulate — though “Dutton Ranch” already feels much closer to that standard.

Even setting critical reception aside, “Dutton Ranch” succeeds in filling the fictional town of Rio Paloma with characters nearly as compelling as those found in “Justified’s” Kentucky settings — from bustling Lexington to rural Harlan County. That cultural and geographical conflict is embodied by Olyphant’s Deputy U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, whose old-fashioned sense of justice often feels out of step with modernity in ways similar to Rip Wheeler. Despite almost dying in “Justified’s” pilot episode, Boyd Crowder — Walton Goggins’ long-running antagonist — feels like a bridge between “Deadwood’s” Al Swearengen and Beulah Jackson.

The shared charisma and sense of philosophy between the three, particularly Crowder and Jackson, is no coincidence. Positioning these verbose, “civilized” villains against the rugged heroes of their respective series is a way for these series to emphasize the same argument posited by “Godless” — that many elements of civilized society are merely a cover for the same violent cruelty humanity has indulged for centuries.

Of all the series on this list, “Banshee” may be the most underrated. Long before becoming one of contemporary television’s most iconic villains on “The Boys,” Antony Starr led this 2010s crime drama for four seasons on Cinemax. His character is another morally complex antihero in the same lineage as Rip Wheeler. Starr plays an unnamed ex-convict who assumes the identity of a slain sheriff, Lucas Hood, while hiding out in the very town the real Hood was traveling to protect.

Rip and “Lucas” are both characters who take borrowed lives as second chances. Rip has lived his second life far longer than the new sheriff of Banshee, Pennsylvania, but the psychological consequences remain the same — fierce loyalty to the people supporting their new lives and a desperate need to protect those identities from the ghosts of the past. “Dutton Ranch” also shifts the character architecture of the “Yellowstone” franchise to focus on Rip, positioning him similarly to “Lucas” in “Banshee.”

That shift carries subtle thematic weight, as Rip becomes central to a larger question: Who poses the greater danger to a community — broken people trying to atone for their pasts, or powerful figures who use those people as cover for their own sins? That same argument is also at the heart of “Banshee.”

We aren’t going to pretend like we don’t consider “Sons of Anarchy” essential viewing for any “Yellowstone” or “Dutton Ranch” fan, largely because of the obvious Taylor Sheridan connection. Before he broke into screenwriting with “Sicario” and “Hell or High Water,” Sheridan was a major recurring cast member on the series, playing a lawman with personal ties to the titular biker gang.

This is the world Sheridan spent years working in before co-creating “Yellowstone,” and the similarities are hard to ignore. Both series approach crime storytelling with a Shakespearean sense of drama, tragedy, and sprawling narrative scope, even if Sheridan has never directly cited Kurt Sutter’s show as an influence.

“Sons of Anarchy” also features what may be the clearest predecessor to Beulah Jackson on this list. Katey Sagal’s Gemma Teller Morrow is a matriarch every bit as ruthless and manipulative as Annette Bening’s Beulah Jackson, with both women masking their true intentions behind disarming charm.

Speaking of powerful matriarchs, no series centers this dynamic quite like “Animal Kingdom.” Ellen Barkin stars in the TNT series as Janine “Smurf” Cody, a SoCal crime boss who runs robberies like a family business. She’s essentially a more stripped-down version of Beulah Jackson, with an even tighter grip on the sons who do her bidding. Her ability to weaponize affection and conditional love against her family — including her newly orphaned grandson, who comes into her care at the start of the series — is chilling to watch and echoes the same dynamic seen between Beulah and Jai Courtney’s Rob-Will Jackson.

“Animal Kingdom” is also a particularly striking option for “Dutton Ranch” fans because of the reprieve it offers from neo-Western aesthetics without losing the deeper themes of family, loyalty, and moral sacrifice. The series takes place on the beaches of Southern California, with the Codys running their criminal enterprise out of an oceanfront mansion. Like the Duttons, the Codys are bound together by legacy, greed, and a deeply warped sense of loyalty that keeps everyone trapped in cycles of violence and betrayal.

For all the flak “Bloodline” got about its deliberately slow pacing, there hasn’t been a family crime drama released since that has cultivated performances nearly as textured from its actors. The Netflix series stars Ben Mendelsohn in a breakout role as an estranged son whose return to the family’s home in the Florida Keys disrupts both their personal lives and business.

The moral register is what binds “Bloodline” closest to “Dutton Ranch” — though it explores its psychological quandaries with an emotionally tangible degree of depth that may legitimately discomfort viewers accustomed to the emotional distance subconsciously enjoyed by more sensational shows. Beth enters “Dutton Ranch,” wondering if she’ll ever be able to achieve the peace that her father was denied until his death, entirely due to the actions he took during his life. Over three seasons, “Bloodline” wrestles with the same questions of guilt and consequence, asking whether seemingly good people deserve to be defined by their worst moments.

The original CBS soap opera “Dallas” is essentially the blueprint not only for “Yellowstone” and “Dutton Ranch,” but for much of modern morally complex prestige television. Television historians have often argued that, without the Ewing oil dynasty, there would be no Sopranos, Roys, or Duttons. Consciously or not, many of the characters in the “Yellowstone” universe — from John Dutton to Beulah Jackson — can trace their DNA back to the ensemble of “Dallas,” particularly Larry Hagman’s iconic J.R. Ewing.

Even those “Yellowstone” fans aware of the “Dallas” legacy may not know that TNT actually produced a revival of the series in 2012. That iteration might be more immediately palatable to fans of “Dutton Ranch” accustomed to the style and pacing of modern TV. Both series are heavily steeped in the same conflict between the rugged heritage of frontier exploration and the restrained, yet no less dangerous, drive for capital accumulation.

One aspect of the original “Yellowstone” series that receives regular praise is Taylor Sheridan’s distinct depiction of Montana. The hope is that “Dutton Ranch” will do the same for South Texas — though “The Bridge” quietly set a high bar for that kind of regional immersion years ago.

Over the course of just two seasons, the 2013-2014 FX thriller took viewers into the heart of border country unlike any series before. When authorities determine that a serial killer is targeting victims on both sides of the border between El Paso and Juárez, detectives from the United States and Mexico — played by Diane Kruger and Demián Bichir — are forced to work together to stop the violence.

It’s an ingeniously simple premise that explores land and border dynamics similar to those in “Yellowstone” and “Dutton Ranch,” but through a very different dramatic lens. “Dutton Ranch” fans will also recognize its focus on Mexican American relations along the border, though “The Bridge” has had more time to explore those themes with greater nuance.

Finally, the only other Taylor Sheridan series on this list — aside from “Sons of Anarchy” — is “Landman.” Premiering in 2024, the Billy Bob Thornton-led series quickly became Sheridan’s biggest hit outside the “Yellowstone” franchise, as well as one of the most popular shows currently streaming. The series has already aired two massively successful seasons thus far and was unsurprisingly renewed by Paramount+ for a third.

While there’s no shortage of shows that resemble “Landman” – including many of Sheridan’s own — what sets it apart is Thornton’s leading performance. He plays Tommy Norris, a modern oilman who basically acts on the platonic ideal of Beulah Jackson’s monopolistic desires. Despite existing outside the “Yellowstone” continuity, “Landman” may be Sheridan’s most direct attempt to answer the franchise’s defining question: Who truly has the right to claim a piece of land, and what responsibility comes with it once the dust settles?