Landman Season 1 ventures into the heart of Texas’s oil industry, offering a compelling blend of corporate intrigue, familial tensions, and rugged landscapes. The series delivers a textured narrative about those who fuel America’s energy boom while navigating their personal highs and lows.
A Compelling Premise Rooted in Reality
Inspired by the world of oil drilling in the Permian Basin, the story centers on Tommy Norris, a crisis manager at M-Tex Oil. His job? Negotiating land rights, extinguishing PR fires, managing emergencies, and juggling complex personal issues. This character-driven tale attempts to portray the reality of oil riggers, executives, and landowners in a region where fortunes are made—and lost—on a daily basis.
The show captures the balancing act between modern industrial ambition and the cultural ethos of rural Texas, where loyalty, tradition, and resilience are as valuable as oil reserves themselves.
Billy Bob Thornton’s Gripping Performance
Tommy Norris is the emotional and moral core of Landman, portrayed with understated intensity and rugged charm. The character’s inner battles—torn between duty, ambition, and redemption—are brought to life in a powerful, believable way.
Through sharp expressions and weathered body language, the portrayal makes Tommy more than just a roughneck-turned-executive. He becomes a mirror for the contradictions and compromises of an industry that rarely sleeps.
Supporting Cast: Rich Potential, Uneven Execution
Despite featuring an impressive ensemble, the show occasionally falters in utilizing its full cast potential. Characters like Monty Miller and Cami Miller have intriguing backgrounds and motives but are too often sidelined. Their stories start with promise but fade without substantial payoff, giving the impression that the series leans too heavily on its central protagonist.
The Norris family dynamic—particularly involving Tommy’s ex-wife Angela and daughter Ainsley—is touched upon but never fully explored. These relationships had the potential to bring emotional gravity but sometimes feel like afterthoughts in the larger industrial plot.

Authentic Setting and Visual Brilliance
One of the show’s standout strengths is its atmospheric realism. The cinematography beautifully captures West Texas’s vast, sun-scorched landscapes. Oil rigs rise like metallic giants in the barren desert, and dusty roads stretch endlessly into the horizon—visuals that ground the drama in a tangible sense of place.
The show’s visual language subtly reinforces the idea of isolation, struggle, and ambition—emotions as expansive as the setting itself. Whether it’s a boardroom negotiation or a late-night drive across the plains, every shot adds weight to the storyline.
Narrative Strengths and Pacing Fluctuations
The show opens with confidence, drawing the audience into a world of risk and reward. However, midway through the season, the pacing becomes inconsistent. Some episodes lean heavily into corporate and land acquisition politics, which, while informative, slow the momentum. Others rush through potentially rich subplots involving side characters.
The back-and-forth between boardroom decisions and family life sometimes feels disjointed. While the main storyline remains intact, it suffers from narrative sprawl—trying to do too much within a limited time frame.
Portrayal of Female Characters
The series misses an opportunity in its depiction of its female characters. Figures like Angela Norris and Ainsley Norris are introduced with promise but rarely receive the layered development afforded to their male counterparts.
Angela’s presence in Tommy’s life is significant but underwritten, often appearing more as a narrative device than a full-fledged character. Ainsley, similarly, could have served as a modern foil to her father’s old-school values, but her arc remains underdeveloped.
There’s a noticeable imbalance that makes the show’s world feel less inclusive and a bit lopsided, considering how integral women are in both industry and family life in modern-day Texas.

Themes and Dialogues
The themes explored in Landman are compelling: the cost of progress, the ethical ambiguity of resource extraction, generational divides, and personal redemption. These are subjects ripe for exploration, and the show does touch on them with sincerity.
However, the dialogue often walks a fine line between gritty and heavy-handed. While there are moments of genuine insight and emotional punch, there are also scenes where characters deliver lines that feel more like speeches than conversation—slightly breaking the realism the visuals work hard to establish.
Despite that, the tone fits the show’s rugged setting. The blunt, no-nonsense talk of the oil fields and corporate offices feels appropriate, even if it occasionally veers into melodrama.
Public Response and Audience Engagement
Viewer reception has been mixed, with many praising the show’s authenticity, strong central performance, and striking visuals. On the flip side, some audiences have pointed out the show’s slow burn and lack of development in secondary plots.
For fans of grounded dramas with socio-economic commentary, Landman has plenty to offer. It doesn’t rely on sensationalism but rather builds its tension from human flaws, corporate dilemmas, and the ever-present pressure to keep drilling forward—literally and metaphorically.
Final Verdict: A Promising But Uneven First Season
Landman Season 1 presents a vivid, thought-provoking exploration of the oil business and its human cost. It excels in setting, atmosphere, and lead performance, offering viewers a window into a rarely dramatized sector of American life. The show’s thematic ambition is commendable, and its potential for future seasons is evident.
However, it’s held back by inconsistent pacing and underused supporting characters. With some refinement in storytelling and a stronger focus on character arcs beyond the protagonist, the show could evolve into something truly special.
Rating: 7.5/10
Pros:
- Outstanding lead performance
- Realistic depiction of the oil industry
- Beautiful cinematography and setting
- Strong central themes
Cons:
- Uneven pacing across episodes
- Supporting characters lack depth
- Underrepresentation of complex female characters