Set during the Utah War of 1857, Peter Berg's limited series lays out a world where love conquers little, indifference is the only path to survival, and wanting anything will only bring death that much faster.

Creator Mark L. Smith's six-episode examination of scruffy, vicious people traversing the Utah Territory in 1857 also stars Taylor Kitsch and Dane DeHaan.

In the catalog of the modern western, a lot of space is given to stories focused on what is assumed to have been the sheer miserableness of life on the frontier. Viscous carpets of mud. Frigid snowscapes. Scalpings. Rapes. The sibilant impact of arrows puncturing flesh.

Netflix's limited series starring Betty Gilpin and Taylor Kitsch plays out against the background of the so-called Utah War.

Netflix's most ambitious western to date explores the conflicts that threaten to destroy pluralistic societies

However, it saps anything resembling wistfulness from its Hollywood Western roots, complicating its chances of cornering the post-Yellowstone market (alongside the latter's many spin-offs). What's left is the husk of a beloved genre,