The season finale of Taylor Sheridan’s Landman is set to premiere on Paramount+ this Sunday, and the show is soon to conclude what has been an incredibly successful first season. Landman premiered while Yellowstone was also airing its final season, and many have dubbed the new Billy Bob Thornton-led series worthy of taking the crown from Kevin Costner’s Western as his next biggest project. One of the more debated points throughout the first nine episodes of Landman has been the show’s accuracy in portraying the oil industry in West Texas. During a recent interview with Deadline, Landman co-creator Christian Wallace spoke about how much of the show is dramatized and how much is real, and he revealed much of Landman is based on true events and accounts he’s heard from someone close to him:
“A lot of it is very accurate. Some of it we had to kind of squeeze together to make it make sense for our characters. And it’s funny, it depends on who you ask. My uncle who works in the oil field for the last 30 years will nitpick every little thing. But I think for the most part, it’s safe to say you get a decent sense of what it’s like working in oil and gas out there.”
“There are things throughout the entire show that are little call-outs from parts of the podcast. We’ve had a ton of people asking me if there are really bikini-clad baristas serving coffee to guys on their way to work in the oil field. And the answer to that is, yes, there really are. We actually had an episode of the podcast where we spoke to some of these baristas. Sex work is a huge part of any boom town that is a part of the economy. It’s part of what happens, and then there are the deaths on the rigs in the oil field. Those are things that really happened. We touched on that in the podcast. We went deep into some of the oil field accidents and safety. Some of the scenes are directly from that, such as the pipe crushing scene. That’s a real story that I heard from my uncle growing up. It was a pipe rack that fell on him and not pipes, but he really did call his wife before he passed away. Some of the things that almost seem unbelievable are actually based on reality.”
It comes as no surprise that working in the oil fields of West Texas is dangerous, but to hear that something like the pipe-crushing scene actually happened in real life is terrifying to think about. Sheridan has done an outstanding job during the first season of Landman introducing the audience to a brand-new world with tons of characters worth investing in, and yet it feels like we’ve only just scratched the surface of everything there is to learn about the oil industry. The show’s primary cog in the wheel of storytelling has been Billy Bob Thornton, who plays Tommy Norris, the lead Landman for Monty Miller’s (Jon Hamm) multi-billion-dollar oil company. Ali Larter also stars in Landman as Tommy’s wife Angela, and Demi Moore features as Monty’s wife Cami.
Has ‘Landman’ Been Renewed for Season 2?
Landman has yet to be officially renewed for Season 2, but the show has been a smash hit that has topped Paramount+ charts since its premiere, so the announcement of a second season is likely coming at some point. Landman has earned scores of 79% from critics and 64% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, and while there is room to improve upon those ratings, even those who have nitpicks about the show have made it appointment viewing on Sunday nights. Landman has already set itself up to be successful well beyond Season 1; don’t be surprised if Sheridan’s latest series is around for many more than one or two seasons.
The first nine episodes of Landman are now streaming and the season finale will air this Sunday. Stay tuned to Collider for future updates and coverage of the series and watch Landman on Paramount+.