Since 2010, the TV Western has seen a renaissance as modern dramas and crime shows like Untamed and Yellowstone captivated audiences around the US. As impressive as their success might be, they all owe a debt to one crime series that gave Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins perhaps their best roles to date. Twenty-five years later, it’s still the greatest neo-Western show ever made. Thanks to hit shows and movies like Alien: Earth, Fallout and The Hateful Eight, Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins have earned the admiration of audiences of all stripes.

Widely regarded as something of a Golden Age of Television, the 2010s raised both stars’ profiles in a way that practically eclipsed their careers before. While some might look to their roles in Tarantino movies and Star Wars projects as their favorites, the truth is they owe a lot to the decade’s foremost Western cop show. An adaptation of a novel series from a treasured author, this hit drama brought out the best in its stars’ talents, and paved the way for everything from Yellowstone to The Mandalorian. A Western series running for six seasons in the 2010s was no easy feat, making this series even more deserving of appreciation.

How Neo-Westerns Dominated Modern Television

Image via Paramount Pictures

Back in the 1950s and ’60s, Western TV series were popular, with the likes of Gunsmoke, Rawhide and Bonanza maintaining devoted fan bases. However, as genres like science fiction and crime became more dominant, the Old West fell by the wayside on TV. In the ’90s, Chuck Norris helped build the neo-Western for TV through Walker, Texas Ranger, focusing on a hard-as-nails martial artist cop. However, unlike its modern successors, that series was rarely taken seriously as thoughtful television, instead a serialized embrace of ’90s action stars.

It wouldn’t be until 2004, in HBO’s Deadwood, that younger generations finally got a great, high-quality Old West series made for them. However, despite being a masterpiece, audiences would have to wait a further six years for star Timothy Olyphant to make a comeback to the genre. After Olyphant’s Justified soared to the status of TV’s greatest Western, it offered a roadmap to other networks to follow in its footsteps. In stark contrast to the likes of CSI and NCIS, these series brought crime dramas to the American heartland, slapping a rustic aesthetic on the procedural. However, these shows also gradually turned more serious, exploring the challenges faced by people in states like Montana, Kentucky and more, focusing on communities that felt left behind.

Throughout the 2010s, this success was evident in series like Longmire, Banshee and Yellowstone, with each new series becoming more cinematic and well-produced than the last. Perhaps the most obvious triumph came in Disney’s The Mandalorian, which effectively brought a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western motif to the galaxy far, far away. In totality, these shows proved one thing: audiences love the modern Western, even if they don’t like the Old West.

Of all these shows, Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone franchise stands out as the greatest testament to the love audiences have for these stories. A modern-day streaming powerhouse, it appealed to people around the world for showing them a side of the modern frontier they rarely see. However, that success owes a huge debt to Fox’s Justified, which cast Timothy Olyphant in the role of Elmore Leonard’s Raylan Givens. Released in 2010, it marked a turning point for both the Western genre and television, and the format hasn’t been the same since. Perhaps its greatest achievement outside of the stories themselves was how the series earned just as much respect from critics as it did fans.

Since 2010, the TV Western has seen a renaissance as modern dramas and crime shows like Untamed and Yellowstone captivated audiences around the US. As impressive as their success might be, they all owe a debt to one crime series that gave Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins perhaps their best roles to date. Twenty-five years later, it’s still the greatest neo-Western show ever made. Thanks to hit shows and movies like Alien: Earth, Fallout and The Hateful Eight, Timothy Olyphant and Walton Goggins have earned the admiration of audiences of all stripes.

Widely regarded as something of a Golden Age of Television, the 2010s raised both stars’ profiles in a way that practically eclipsed their careers before. While some might look to their roles in Tarantino movies and Star Wars projects as their favorites, the truth is they owe a lot to the decade’s foremost Western cop show. An adaptation of a novel series from a treasured author, this hit drama brought out the best in its stars’ talents, and paved the way for everything from Yellowstone to The Mandalorian. A Western series running for six seasons in the 2010s was no easy feat, making this series even more deserving of appreciation.

How Neo-Westerns Dominated Modern Television

Image via Paramount Pictures

Back in the 1950s and ’60s, Western TV series were popular, with the likes of Gunsmoke, Rawhide and Bonanza maintaining devoted fan bases. However, as genres like science fiction and crime became more dominant, the Old West fell by the wayside on TV. In the ’90s, Chuck Norris helped build the neo-Western for TV through Walker, Texas Ranger, focusing on a hard-as-nails martial artist cop. However, unlike its modern successors, that series was rarely taken seriously as thoughtful television, instead a serialized embrace of ’90s action stars.

It wouldn’t be until 2004, in HBO’s Deadwood, that younger generations finally got a great, high-quality Old West series made for them. However, despite being a masterpiece, audiences would have to wait a further six years for star Timothy Olyphant to make a comeback to the genre. After Olyphant’s Justified soared to the status of TV’s greatest Western, it offered a roadmap to other networks to follow in its footsteps. In stark contrast to the likes of CSI and NCIS, these series brought crime dramas to the American heartland, slapping a rustic aesthetic on the procedural. However, these shows also gradually turned more serious, exploring the challenges faced by people in states like Montana, Kentucky and more, focusing on communities that felt left behind.

Throughout the 2010s, this success was evident in series like Longmire, Banshee and Yellowstone, with each new series becoming more cinematic and well-produced than the last. Perhaps the most obvious triumph came in Disney’s The Mandalorian, which effectively brought a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western motif to the galaxy far, far away. In totality, these shows proved one thing: audiences love the modern Western, even if they don’t like the Old West.

Of all these shows, Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone franchise stands out as the greatest testament to the love audiences have for these stories. A modern-day streaming powerhouse, it appealed to people around the world for showing them a side of the modern frontier they rarely see. However, that success owes a huge debt to Fox’s Justified, which cast Timothy Olyphant in the role of Elmore Leonard’s Raylan Givens. Released in 2010, it marked a turning point for both the Western genre and television, and the format hasn’t been the same since. Perhaps its greatest achievement outside of the stories themselves was how the series earned just as much respect from critics as it did fans.

Justified Paved The Way For Modern Western TV

Image via FX

Justified focuses on a US Marshal, Raylan Givens, as he’s sent to his hometown in Harlan County, Kentucky, as a punishment for his reckless, Wild West methods in Miami. An impoverished town where Raylan used to dig coal, his old friend, Boyd Crowder, has gotten mixed up with a gang of neo-Nazis. After returning, he soon gets reacquainted with old friends, and meets new ones at the local Marshals office. His duties there mainly entail pursuing fugitives of the state, but he gets involved with criminal investigations into local drug dealers and organized crime bosses. As he focuses on his job, he’s often left torn on Boyd, who alternates between his past loyalties to Givens and his own criminal ambitions.

Despite chances at rehabilitation, Crowder’s chaotic nature always kept full redemption just out of reach, and this tension kept Raylan torn on what to do with his old buddy. It was that tension alone that made the series worth investing in. As the series played out, audiences were given the familiar structure of shows like The X-Files, teeing up one major villain per season and filling the blanks with episodic crime stories. Throughout his time back in Kentucky, Raylan rebuilds strained relationships from his past, and constantly proves that he’s the best lawman in town.

Much like Yellowstone, the series gets into the politics and economics of America’s coal country. Through these stories, it touches on issues of poverty leading to crime, exploitative practices and the cultural differences between Givens’ time in Miami versus Harlan County. For some, the series is an exceptional crime show, while for others it’s that coupled with a moving story of redemption, friendship and a forgotten part of America. Justified was made on the back of cinematic masterpieces like No Country For Old Men, which proved that the merger of crime and Western was brimming with potential.

Throughout the series, the influences of films like that 2008 Best Picture Winner is made clear through the show’s motif, slow-burn character dramas and villains. This should come as no surprise considering the series is itself also based on the works of a crime novelist, Elmore Leonard, who shared the love of neo-Westerns that Cormac McCarthy does. Indeed, for audiences who admire the versatility of the neo-Western sub-genre, no show proved it as well as this gem. When it was revived for a miniseries, City Primeval, it reminded fans all over again that Raylan Givens is the greatest lawman on TV.

Olyphant And Goggins Perfected The Formula

To say that Justified is a simple procedural wouldn’t do justice to what the series’ showrunners achieved with the story. In contrast to the standard procedurals that dominated the 2000s, the series developed its characters and make virtually every episode count. While some stories were villain-of-the-week type cases, they’d still feature something consequential happening, either for Raylan, Boyd or someone close to them. As a US Marshal, one of the most entertaining things Givens would do was chase down fugitives, capturing the appeal of old-school bounty hunter Westerns for modern America. With some of the best one-liners on TV, the hero’s approach to policing was every bit the 21st century cowboy fans wanted to see.

Throughout the show, Givens and Crowder developed a dynamic reminiscent of what fans like about the Batman and Joker dynamic, albeit more complex. Where Raylans embodied the honorable, heroic lawman with a few character flaws, Boyd was the unpredictable adversary who’d alternate between antihero status, villain and friend. It’s this complexity and moral ambiguity that captured the volatility of the Old West so many people love, and ultimately defined the show. Although Olyphant did a fantastic job as Seth Bullock in HBO’s Deadwood, his career was ultimately defined by the character Raylan Givens. In the years since, TV hasn’t produced a worthy successor since, despite several shows trying.

Since Justified, studios have realized just how workable the themes of the Wild West are in other settings. Although the more ‘authentic’ version of the genre has slipped in popularity, blending of themes and ideas has proven incredibly successful. In shows like Fallout and The Mandalorian, both Goggins and Olyphant have been able to continue their Western careers through a science fiction lens. Shows like Longmire and Banshee gave fans even more of Justified’s approach of cinematic crime stories set in America’s heartland. In effect, Fox’s show was one of the most evergreen ideas in fiction: a lone hero bringing law to a lawless town. Fifteen years after its debut, it seems there’s a fresh update of the idea every year, and they consistently dominate streaming.

Justified Is Still A Masterpiece

Image via FX

A decade after the show ended, Justified remains the greatest Western crime show of all time. As much as Taylor Sheridan fans would love to point to Yellowstone, the fact is that show works so much better as a family drama, not a thriller. As the six-year dynamic between Boyd Crowder and Raylan Givens unfolded, fans were given one of the most unpredictable and gripping character dynamics on TV. Today, virtually all of the series’ greatest imitators have tried and failed to live up to this dynamic, with Goggins’ criminal giving the show some of its best writing.

In Fox’s show, audiences were given everything great about films like No Country For Old Men, Dirty Harry and The Fugitive distilled into a fresh cop show. As Alien Earth and Fallout continue to prove the talents of Olyphant and Goggins, respectively, fans of the series have plenty to enjoy from them. A decade after the series ended, Fox’s Justified remains the king of modern Western crime television, and everything from Yellowstone to Longmire owe their success to the masterpiece.