Landman (TV series)

• 1. Introduction

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  Landman is an American drama series, and its own description sets the scale at once. It promises a West Texas oilfield world of "roughnecks and wildcat billionaires" who are "fueling a boom so big it is reshaping our climate, our economy, and our geopolitics." Taylor Sheridan and Christian Wallace created the show, and it asks the viewer to spend time with abrasive, hard-driving people. Their work touches oil, money, family and crime all at once. Several questions run through this documentary. How did a podcast become a television series? What does a landman actually do on screen, and who surrounds him? Why did one character's speech about wind turbines travel so far on social media? And why did a famous broadcaster's company go to federal court over a short piece of old radio?

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• 2. From Podcast to Premiere

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  The idea began with Boomtown, a podcast series hosted by Christian Wallace. In February 2022, Paramount+ ordered a television series inspired by it, titled Landman, from screenwriter Taylor Sheridan. Billy Bob Thornton was attached as the star. Over the next two years, the supporting cast filled in on a clear schedule. In May 2023, Jacob Lofland, Ali Larter and Michelle Randolph joined. January 2024 brought Kayla Wallace, James Jordan, Mark Collie and Paulina Chavez as series regulars. Reports of Jon Hamm joining followed in February 2024. In April 2024, Octavio Rodriguez and J. R. Villarreal were reported as recurring characters.

  The first season launched on Paramount+ on the 17th of November 2024 with two episodes at once. After that, the remaining episodes of the ten-episode season arrived weekly on Sundays, ending on the 12th of January 2025.

  In May 2024, Demi Moore confirmed that a second season was planned, with production due to start in early 2025. Paramount+ made the renewal official in March 2025. Sam Elliott then joined as a series regular for season two in April 2025, and Stefania Spampinato was cast in a recurring role that June. The second season premiered on the 16th of November 2025. That December, Paramount+ renewed the series for a third season.

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• 3. The World of M-Tex

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  At the center of the story sits Tommy Norris, played by Billy Bob Thornton. He holds an unusual double role at M-Tex Oil, working as a petroleum landman while also serving as an operations vice president. He is later promoted to president. Tommy can be abrasive, and so can the out-of-town lawyer Rebecca Falcone, a causation lawyer at the firm Shepherd-Hastings. Early in season one she arrives to investigate a fatal accident. She later becomes in-house counsel for M-Tex.

  The company's owner in the first season is Monty Miller, played by Jon Hamm. He has a long personal and professional history with Tommy. His wife, Cami Miller, played by Demi Moore, later takes over ownership of M-Tex. Around them are Nathan, a company attorney and administrator, played by Colm Feore, and Dale Bradley, a petroleum engineer. Mark Collie plays Walt Joeberg, the Sheriff of Midland County.

  Tommy's own household is tangled. His ex-wife Angela, played by Ali Larter, is the mother of his two children. Cooper is a former petroleum geology student who left Texas Tech to work for M-Tex as a roustabout. Ainsley is a high school cheerleader. Cooper's love interest is Ariana Medina, who is widowed. Her late husband Elvio was part of an oil crew that included his brother Armando and his uncle Luis. Michael Pena plays Armando, the lead crewman who trains Cooper.

  Crime runs underneath the oil business. Jimenez, a lieutenant of the local Midland drug network, belongs to the international Gallino cartel. In season two, Andy Garcia becomes a main player as Danny "Gallino" Morrell, a Cuban American who heads the cartel while presenting himself publicly as a legitimate financial investor. Sam Elliott joins the same season as Thomas "T. L." Norris, Tommy's father.

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• 4. Fort Worth Stands In

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  Although the story belongs to West Texas, cameras began rolling in and around Fort Worth in February 2024. Shooting for the first season wrapped in June 2024. The locations had real ties to the industry being portrayed. They included the headquarters of the American Association of Professional Landmen, the national association representing land professionals. The Fort Worth Petroleum Club and Rivercrest Country Club also appeared. So did Texas Christian University, which fits the plot, since Ainsley's college path leads there. The cast includes a TCU admission officer, a TCU cheerleader coach and a roommate who almost shares Ainsley's dorm.

  Second-season filming ran from April 2025 until August 2025. The source notes that work on a third season may begin in May 2026.

  The sound of the series comes from composer Andrew Lockington, who previously scored Mayor of Kingstown and Lioness. Landman marks his third collaboration with Sheridan. UMG Nashville has released soundtrack albums for the first and second seasons. Some songs on those albums were written by cast members Billy Bob Thornton and Mark Collie. For season two, the show also uses music by Lainey Wilson, an actress and musician known from Yellowstone.

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• 5. Reviews and Awards

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  On Rotten Tomatoes, the first season holds a 78% approval rating drawn from 37 critic reviews. The site's consensus reads, "Landman plumbs much of the same territory as other Taylor Sheridan-penned series, but having Billy Bob Thornton on hand turns this Texas crude into highly watchable fuel." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, gave the season 60 out of 100 from 20 critics. That score falls in its "mixed or average" band.

  The second season fared better. Rotten Tomatoes lists 83% from 37 reviews, and its consensus praises the season for "further refining its brutish elements into addictive drama." The same summary credits "minor improvements" in how the show treats its female characters and "Billy Bob Thornton's hangdog swagger." Metacritic gave season two 66 out of 100 from eight critics, which counts as "generally favorable."

  Award listings tell a similar story of attention for the cast. Thornton appears in best actor categories for drama series at the Golden Globes and Satellite Awards in 2025, and at the Critics' Choice Television Awards in 2026. A large ensemble, including Paulina Chavez, Sam Elliott, Andy Garcia and Demi Moore, is listed for ensemble honors at the Actor Awards and the Satellite Awards in 2026. A stunt ensemble is named at the Actor Awards. The Location Managers Guild Awards in 2025 list Dustin Daniels and Stuart Berberich for outstanding locations. The source does not record the results.

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• 6. The Wind Turbine Speech

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  One piece of dialogue left the show and entered public argument. In it, the fictional oil man Tommy Norris says a wind turbine takes so much steel, oil and concrete to build that its carbon footprint cannot be paid back. He claims the turbine would not offset its costs within a twenty-year lifespan.

  The clip was reposted on social media by a mix of fossil fuel advocates, oil executives and a US senator. Their sharing treated a scripted line as if it were evidence.

  The claim does not hold up well against research. Life cycle analyses of wind energy find that far more carbon is offset than is produced when turbines are built. An energy researcher at the University of Texas at Austin points to data showing something sharper. A wind turbine installed in West Texas can offset the carbon spent making it within a single year, not twenty.

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• 7. Women on Screen

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  The harshest reviews of the first season focused on its female characters, which critics described as caricatures and negative stereotypes. A reviewer for Texas Monthly compared the experience to watching a racy reboot of an old show built on revealing outfits. When National Public Radio looked at the first two episodes, it found the talents of Demi Moore and Ali Larter underused. In those scenes, the reviewer wrote, they were "playing caricatures and male fantasies."

  Rolling Stone imagined what The Dukes of Hazzard would have looked like on late-night Cinemax. Entertainment Weekly argued that the women exist only through how Tommy and his cowboy cohorts see them, and that they are "around to distract, annoy, titillate, entreat, or yell at the men." The New Yorker said the screenwriting plays fast and loose with sexist stereotypes, and used Angela, Tommy's ex-wife, as its example. A critic for Vulture went further and called the writing misogynistic. That critic singled out Ainsley, a teenage daughter played by an obviously older actress, as hard to defend.

  Two cast members pushed back. Ali Larter defended Sheridan's writing, saying he writes "women in their prime, that were still allowed to be alive." She also defended Angela, saying the character can express that side of herself and is "a full rainbow." Michelle Randolph likewise defended Sheridan and her own portrayal of Ainsley.

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• 8. The Paul Harvey Clip

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  On the 23rd of June 2025, a company called Paulynne, Inc. filed suit in New York federal court against Paramount Global. Paulynne owns and controls all the intellectual property of the famed broadcaster Paul Harvey. The dispute centered on a 90-second audio clip from his program The Rest of the Story. Paramount had used a segment about rising gas prices, taken from Harvey's 2009 "Gas Crisis" episode. It ran at the opening of the Season 1 finale of Landman.

  The complaint made two accusations. First, Paramount did not obtain permission to use the clip. Second, Paramount edited it in a way that changed Harvey's viewpoint on government fossil-fuel policies and his interest in alternative fuels. The source material does not record how the case ended.

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