By Bob Grimm

After a grand start, Netflix’s American Primeval fades toward a bland, copout finish. The brutal depiction of the old American West can’t maintain its energy over six episodes.

Directed entirely by Peter Berg, this feels a lot like The Revenant meeting his own Friday Night Lights. When it clicks, it really sparks, and it’s not afraid to go dark and bloody—but it also meanders. The ending feels like a last-ditch effort to create something feel-good after six hours of bloody action scenes woven between dull stretches. 

Boy, this depiction of early Mormon settlers is certainly not positive. Brigham Young (Kim Coates), Mormon leader and the governor of the Utah Territory during the period depicted here, is shown as villainous scum. Perhaps that really was the case, but he’s like Satan in this thing. The dude doesn’t possess a single redeeming quality. 

The majority of the story follows Sara (Betty Gilpin), a fugitive trying to make it across the country with her young son. She winds up with a rather feral man (Taylor Kitsch) as her guide; he’s a sort of John Wick of the Old West: He can kick ass, and he’s severely bummed out. 

Dane Dehaan plays a Mormon settler who suffers a major injury during a particularly violent attack. He spends most of the show with blood caked all over his head, woozily searching for his lost wife (Saura Lightfoot-Leon). I often can’t stand Dehaan, but his performances have been a little less hammy as of late, and he does OK playing a poor fellow whose scalp has been sloppily stitched back on. Jai Courtney and Shea Whigham help round out a strong cast. 

The violence in the show would merit a hard R rating, similar to the gory reality of Berg’s Lone Survivor. The Wild West depicted here is very gray, dirty and despairing, and it gets a bit tedious past the halfway point. Some subplots involving the anguish of Native Americans feel like they’ve been abbreviated. There’s not enough heft. 

Gilpin and Kitsch are good with what they are given, but even with six hours of running time, their characters don’t feel fleshed out enough. There’s a scene in which Gilpin flies into action like she’s been handling guns since the crib, but the show never really explores how she got those skills. Maybe a prequel is planned?

Actually, that wouldn’t be a bad idea. That moment when Gilpin goes crazy with the guns reminded me what a great action star she can be. Her action moments are actually far more compelling than when Kitsch is kicking butt. A show that depicts how her character got to her status at the beginning of this show would probably be a lot better. After The Hunt—an underrated gem released in the early days of the pandemic—I’ve always wanted to see Gilpin get more badass. There’s a little bit of that here, but not enough. 

A story thread involving the owner of a fort (Whigham) squaring off with the Mormons is interesting, thanks mostly to Whigham’s growly performance and his character’s moxie as he faces Brigham Young. Again, it’s really quite shocking how nasty Brigham Young is in here. His fan club is going to be pissed.

The show was decent enough for me to binge it rather rapidly, even though the returns diminish in the final third. Some episodes, including the first one, are stand-alone good and worthy of your time, but overall, American Primeval feels a bit shallow and pieced together. Berg is a talented director, and it shows at times—but it seems like he runs out of things to say.

American Primeval is streaming on Netflix.