Stream It Or Skip It: 'Ransom Canyon' on Netflix, a soapy Texas ranch drama that's a cross between 'Yellowstone' and 'Virgin River' (2025)

Say what you will about this being a golden age of television, but audiences now aren’t that much different than audiences in the eighties, when nighttime soaps like Dallas and Dynasty reigned supreme. Audiences want provocative storylines, rivalries, romance, and unrequited love — if that involves a love triangle or two, all the better. That’s what they got with Yellowstone, and that’s what they’re going to get with the new Netflix series Ransom Canyon.

RANSOM CANYON: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: The camera pans up from the ground to show a man sitting on his horse, contemplating the beautiful scenery on his ranch in Ransom Canyon, Texas.

The Gist: Staten Kirkland (Josh Duhamel), a Texas rancher, has been on his own since his wife died two years prior, and he hasn’t really been off the ranch much since. But he shows up at a birthday party his wife’s brother, Davis Collins (Eoin Macken) is throwing for Staten’s son Randall (Hubert Smielecki). The person who’s happiest to see Staten out and about, though, is Quinn O’Grady (Minka Kelly), his wife’s best friend and someone who has been in love with him since they were both teenagers.

Davis surprises Randall with a brand new sports car, which of course ticks off Staten, who’s never been a fan of his brother-in-law. He demands that Randall return the car, but Randall goes out that night to drive it, spitting out the invective, “I wish you were the one who died.” Of course, you know what that means: Staten gets a call in the middle of the night that Randall died in an auto accident.

One year later, with both losses weighing heavily on Staten, Quinn continues to be there for him, even while Davis continues to let her know in no uncertain terms that they should go out on a date. She invites Staten to a Friday night high school football game, and he stoically leaves when he sees a banner paying tribute to Randall.

In the meantime, Davis is trying to get a water pipeline built through his ranch as well as Stanton’s; the money he gets from it will help, since he is heavily leveraged. But Stanton steadfastly refuses to entertain the idea, and he tries to get neighboring ranch owner Cap Fuller (James Brolin) on board. Speaking of Cap, he’s just hired a new foreman, Yancy Grey (Jack Schumacher), whose background is mysterious and whose intentions with the ranch are even murkier.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Created April Blair and based on the Ransom Canyon novel series by Jodi Thomas, Ransom Canyon can best be described as mostly Yellowstone with a sprinkle of Virgin River romanticism mixed in.

Our Take:

Is Ransom Canyon full of ridiculousness? Absolutely. In its first episode, we get a love triangle — actually two, if you consider high school cheerleader Lauren Brigman (Lizzy Greene) having both supposed “bad boy” Lucas Russell (Garrett Wareing) and Quinn’s douchey son Tim (Niko Guardado) vying for her attention. There’s the rivalry between Stanton and Davis, which will be as much about the pipeline as it is about Quinn. There’s Stanton dealing with two devastating losses in the span of two years. Then, just for a bit of Cholula for spice, Tim hurts himself falling through the rotted floor of an abandoned house.

Is there eye-rolling dialogue? Definitely. When Stanton presents evidence to the sheriff, Dan Brigman (Philip Winchester) — yes, Lauren’s dad, who’s not a fan of Lucas Russell, by the way — that another car ran Randall off the road, and the sheriff dismisses it, Stanton says, “You know what would do me some good, Dan, is if you did your goddamn job.” That’s just one of the many clunky, exposition-laden lines in the first episode.

But we’ve learned over the years, and especially since we panned Yellowstone‘s premiere episode, that people want ridiculousness like this, even in the streaming era. It’s no different than the era when Dallas and Dynasty foisted the most insane plots and fight scenes on audiences, but they kept coming back for more, including spinoffs. Ransom Canyon takes the Yellowstone formula and adds some romance to it, leaning on scenes where Stanton and Quinn stare into each other’s eyes, with Stanton always afraid to make the move he wants to make and Quinn praying he makes that move so she doesn’t have to move on with a slimy dude like Davis.

In fact, it’s the charm and chemistry of Duhamel and Kelly that keep Ransom Canyon from spiraling completely out of control. From the second Stanton and Quinn see each other at the birthday party, you know there’s a lot of unsaid history between the two, and the pair project that well. Will it get frustrating that the two of them won’t get together? Sure. But Stanton’s reticence is earned, given that he’s suffered these huge losses and Quinn was his wife’s best friend. Any roadblocks he puts in the way of him and Quinn getting together probably won’t feel as artificial as they could be.

The rest of the storylines, especially the ones involving the Lauren-Lucas relationship and how Yancy’s efforts to grab Cap’s ranch from him might be discovered by Ellie Estevez (Marianly Tejada), Quinn’s friend and co-owner of their dance hall, are underdeveloped, and not all of them will gain much more complexity in a ten-episode season. But it’ll be entertaining to see which of these shake out and which don’t.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode, but we’re pretty sure there will be plenty of both in the series.

Parting Shot: There’s a reason why Yancy has gone to work for Cap, and we learn part of that reason in the last scene.

Our Call: STREAM IT. No one is going to mistake Ransom Canyon for prestige television. But it’s certainly a soapy, guilty pleasure, anchored by performances from Duhamel and Kelly that make you want to see both of their characters get what they want, which is each other.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.