9 Years Later, Netflix’s Best Western Miniseries is Better Than Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone

Nine years after riding onto Netflix, Godless remains one of the streamer’s finest Westerns. And for viewers who prefer a lean, complete gunslinger tale over a sprawling ranching dynasty, Scott Frank’s seven-episode miniseries arguably does what Yellowstone does with considerably less baggage. Released on November 22, 2017, Godless follows outlaw Roy Goode (Jack O’Connell) after he betrays his murderous mentor, Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels), and seeks refuge near La Belle, New Mexico. The town has been left largely populated by women after a mining disaster killed most of its men, placing Michelle Dockery’s Alice Fletcher and Merritt Wever’s Mary Agnes at the center of the approaching bloodshed.

The numbers make that comparison less audacious than it sounds. Godless and Yellowstone both hold an 83% average critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, while Yellowstone currently carries a 76% audience score. Rotten Tomatoes confirms the latter’s five-season run and current ratings. Where Sheridan built an empire, Frank needed only seven episodes to make his mark. 

Godless Makes Every Bullet Count

Credit: Ursula Coyote/Netflix

Yellowstone luxuriates in the Dutton family’s wars over land, power, loyalty, and succession. Godless has no such runway. Its episodes range from roughly 41 to 80 minutes, and the story reaches its conclusion in Episode 7, Homecoming. That brevity doesn’t leave La Belle feeling threadbare. Frank stuffs the series with train robberies, gunfights, fractured families, frontier survival, and a magnificently rancid villain in Daniels’ Frank Griffin, yet the characters rarely become furniture between action sequences.

Frank originally wrote Godless as a feature film before producers Steven Soderbergh and Casey Silver suggested expanding it into a miniseries. Netflix eventually took the project after years of failed attempts to get the Western made. Frank recalled one studio executive telling him, “You’re answering a question that nobody’s asking.” The Los Angeles Times detailed the show’s 15-year journey to television.

History gave that executive a fairly amusing rebuttal. The Television Academy ultimately gave Godless 12 Emmy nominations and three wins, including acting trophies for Jeff Daniels and Merritt Wever and a Main Title Theme Music Emmy for Carlos Rafael Rivera.

Godless Found a Western Story Yellowstone Never Told

Credits: Paramount+

The more compelling distinction lies with La Belle itself. Frank’s inspiration came from research into Southwestern mining towns where catastrophic accidents could kill scores of male workers at once, leaving women either to abandon the settlement or keep it alive themselves. “Sometimes they’d move on and sometimes they’d make a go of it,” he told the Los Angeles Times. 

That premise allows Godless to retain the iconography of a classical Western while shifting who gets to inhabit it. Alice is no ornamental frontier widow, Mary Agnes openly rejects the limitations imposed on her, and La Belle’s women eventually have to defend their own town. Frank resisted reducing that approach to a marketing label. Speaking about the show’s reputation as a feminist Western, he explained that he was equally interested in fathers and sons and saw the female-centered setup as potent storytelling rather than a manifesto.

Daniels identified the same quality more succinctly. Discussing why the premise distinguished Godless from familiar Westerns, he told Rotten Tomatoes:

Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone became the larger phenomenon and spawned an expansive television universe. Godless chose the opposite path: seven episodes, one vicious feud, one beleaguered town, and an ending that actually ends. For viewers who value economy over empire-building, that makes Netflix’s Western the sharper ride nine years later. Does Godless deserve another wave of attention, or does Yellowstone remain your modern Western benchmark? Tell us in the comments and follow FandomWire for more recommendations and TV coverage.