Taylor Sheridan writes terse exchanges well, especially between older people who know one another. We are less persuaded when he makes a capable character seem foolish, or turns a whole city into something to dislike.
Fi1m perspective
In The Madison (2026), Michelle Pfeiffer lets Stacy Clyburn’s hands and breathing reveal the grief she is trying to contain. Her scenes with Kurt Russell’s Preston have the ease of people who can leave sentences unfinished. Sheridan writes these exchanges naturally, without making either person explain a feeling the other already understands. We were moved by Pfeiffer’s restraint, because she makes the effort of carrying on visible when the script gives her so little to say.
That economy runs through his frontier writing, from the screenplay for Sicario (2015) to Hell or High Water (2016) and Wind River (2017), which he also directed. He favours simple plots and lets speech reveal feelings rather than supply background. He expanded into series creation with Yellowstone (2018), followed by the prequel 1883 (2021). The six episodes of The Madison suggest that he can leave out too much: there is a difference between keeping dialogue spare and giving actors too little to work with.
In Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario, the writing’s limitations matter without undoing an unnerving thriller. Emily Blunt’s Kate Macer remains a credible, capable FBI agent even when Sheridan relies too often on her being surprised by her colleagues’ conduct. Her questions make sense; the innocence the screenplay requires of her does not always do so. Blunt gives those reactions enough weight that we keep worrying about her, rather than merely waiting for someone to explain what is happening.
Back in The Madison, Christina Alexandra Voros, who directs and photographs, holds on Pfeiffer and gives the landscape long, unhurried shots. Those choices suit a drama about mourning, but by the third episode there is too little story to sustain them. The New York passages are worse: Sheridan writes the city as uniformly unpleasant. Its inhabitants become reasons to dislike the place, and their sourness intrudes on the family’s grief. We would start with Sicario and leave The Madison to those willing to spend six episodes chiefly for Pfeiffer and Russell.
Biography
Taylor Sheridan is an American writer, producer and director. He wrote the screenplays for the films Sicario (2015) and Hell or High Water (2016). He created and wrote the Paramount+ series The Madison (2026).
Sheridan is also known for writing and directing Wind River (2017) and for creating the television series Yellowstone (2018) and its prequels 1883 (2021) and 1923 (2022). He has written or co-written further series including Tulsa King (2022), Lioness (2023) and Landman.
