The PBS Nature documentary American Horses, airing Wednesday on PBS (8/7c, and on the PBS app), spends a considerable amount of its hour-long running time tailing Wyoming ranchers Tara Miller and Mike Miller as they wrangle quarter horses on their property high on the Rocky Mountain plain, but mere mention of the Paramount Network TV western Yellowstone, recently renewed for a fifth season, is enough to give Tara Miller conniptions.
Yellowstone tells the multi-generational tale of a sprawling cattle ranch in Montana and the Dutton clan, who face simmering conflicts that oftern boil over, conflicts with the denizens of a nearby Native American reservation and a long parade of rapacious — and ruthless — and developers. It’s a life that, superficially anyway, appears to mirror that of the real-life Miller clan, but Tara Miller, for one, is having none of it.
The aggregate review website Rotten Tomatoes notes Yellowstone holds a 53% approval rating among critics — those wieners — based on 49 reviews, though it’s considerably more popular among regular viewers. The site’s critical consesnus of Yellowstone’s first season (the reviews have improved somewhat over the intervening years and seasons) reads, “Yellowstone proves too melodramatic to be taken seriously, diminshing the effect of the talented cast and beauitful backdrops.”
‘Melodramatic” ain’t the half ot it, Miller suggested toward the end of a Zoom teleconference call with TV critics to promote PBS Nature’s more sober, even-tempered — and realistic — documentary program American Horses.
Yellowstone features quarter horses prominently — the same breed the Millers work with for a living — in many of its storylines.
“I couldn’t hear you,” Miller said, “because the phone was ringing. “I think you were talking about Yellowstone. That show makes me embarrassed to be a rancher because it is so phony.”
Don’t get her started, in other words — but she got started anyway.
“Those horses in the show aren’t really the quarter horses most ranchers are going to get,” she continued. “We know the people that are training those horses in the show. Those horses — they’re elite training horses. They are a trained cow horse.”
A cow horse is so named because it’s trained to herd cows, often by instinct.
“Mike does train cow horses, but that’s not generally what we use on our ranch,” Miller said. “I really dislike the show Yellowstone. Like I say, I think that branding your help and then going out and killing people, and making heroes out of these people — it’s awful.
“But I’m not sure what the question was because I couldn’t hear anything.”
Miller came to the work honestly, over time. She was born into a ranching family.
“I grew up on a ranch over in Pinesdale [Montana, pop. 805]. We were raised in rodeo. I mean, this is — I'm going back to it, but you know how we were talking about different types of horses are good for different things, but you wouldn't want to buy one of those type of horses for trail riding or ranching, the horses that they’re using in Yellowstone. If you watch them closely, they hang their heads down. If you get them out in the real world, they'll stumble and everything. Okay, I’ll quit now. Okay.”
American Horses premieres Wednesday on PBS (8/7c) and on the PBS app.
Paramount Network