Taylor Sheridan’s shows are always great options for anyone with a Paramount+ subscription. Although the Yellowstone creator is known for his Westerns, his catalog has a wide variety. He also writes and produces dramas, spy thrillers, and action-packed series centered on law enforcement, giving subscribers a vast, bingeable “Sheridanverse” with consistent intensity, great performances, and distinctive settings. However, Billions, a seven-season crime thriller, is a better choice.
Created by Ocean’s Thirteen writers Brian Koppelman, David Levien, and financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin, Billions has 84 episodes, making it longer than any Taylor Sheridan series. The series stars Damian Lewis as a billionaire hedge fund manager who uses insider trading and bribery to grow his firm’s wealth. It earned several accolades during its run, including the Satellite Award for Best Television Series – Drama in 2023.
Taylor Sheridan’s Shows Mostly Use the ‘Billions’ Formula
Billions, which originally aired on Showtime, strikes a similar chord to many of Taylor Sheridan’s Paramount+ series. Like Yellowstone, Mayor of Kingstown, Landman, and Tulsa King, it’s about power, excellence, loyalty, bent moral compasses, and the defense of empires against sustained institutional or criminal threats.
Taylor Sheridan’s acclaimed shows tend to focus on a strong yet flawed figure. This person operates by his own code, like Bobby Axelrod, magnificently played by Damian Lewis. The Billions character is a self-made hedge-fund billionaire who bends or breaks rules to protect his position, people, and assets. Eager to bring him down is U.S. Attorney Chuck Rhoades.
This character arc is like John Dutton guarding the Yellowstone Ranch from Market Equities and the Broken Rock Tribe, or Dwight Manifredi dealing with people who want a piece of his thriving Tulsa empire. These characters aren’t pure heroes or villains. They’re ambitious realists who see their ruthless tactics as necessary tools for survival and longevity.
Loyalty and the price of belonging are common themes in both series. Axe Capital functions like a tight-knit community whose members are expected to put profit and the firm’s needs first. Sheridan’s shows mostly obsess over kinship (like the never-ending Dutton family saga), where defending friends and family members can justify extreme acts.
Each series also delivers sharp confrontations that double as meditations on the American Dream, masculinity, femininity, and Darwinian systems that reward winners while punishing weakness.
Stylistically, these shows have high-stakes plotting, strong ensembles with detailed characterization, and a willingness to linger on the high cost of ambition. They’re all tense and binge-worthy, leaving us wondering whether the central characters will eventually lose what they have. Sure, the settings are different. Billions is mostly set in boardrooms, whereas Sheridan’s shows are set on Montana ranches or in Texas oil fields. However, the underlying elements of empire, code, dominance, and consequence are remarkably consistent.
Why ‘Billions’ Is Better Than Taylor Sheridan’s Shows
Billions is a more intelligent show because information is always the weapon. Axelrod and Rhoades take turns coming out on top. But they never win by being tougher. They win by out-studying each other. Each episode plays out a chess match. Because both men are extremely wise, it’s never easy to tell who will have the upper hand next.
The dialogue, too, creates a wide gulf between the two shows. Sheridan’s main characters often rely on aphorisms and weathered silences, which is fine until a character from a new series starts to sound like one from the previous ones. Billions gives its characters distinct voices. Some are funny, some constantly quote pop culture, and others live by the numbers.
Billions presents power more accurately and honestly. Taylor Sheridan tends to suggest that power is something that a strong person can hold indefinitely. Things are different in Billions, and a Chuck Rhoades line sums it up perfectly: “I guess that’s New York for you, right? Boss one minute, in the gutter the next.” Since the show focuses on business, power is a transaction that is constantly renegotiated. And every alliance has an expiry date. This is close to how things work in the real world.
Admittedly, Taylor Sheridan’s proven formula delivers reliable escapism and subtler, literary pleasures that compound over time. Yellowstone ends an episode with a standoff, followed by a boundary being held. Every episode of Billions ends with a boundary being redrawn, and with several characters suffering the consequences.
- Release Date
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2016 – 2023-00-00
- Network
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Showtime
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
