• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, April 21, 2025

Just about every cliché in the book adds up to a likely hit for Netflix with its new contemporary Western series “Ransom Canyon.”

Premiering last Thursday, the show centers on a rugged rancher in Texas Hill Country who is coping with tragedy while fending off pressure from powerful interests to sell his spread to oil developers. 

That’s cliché No. 1 -- the age-old feudin’ and a-fightin’ between cattlemen and oilmen. The conflict goes back at least as far as “Giant,” first a 1952 novel and then a blockbuster movie in 1956.

Played by Josh Duhamel, 52 (above photo), the rancher, Staten Kirkland, is -- surprise, surprise -- a man of few words. Cliché No. 2.

He is a man burdened by the sudden deaths of the two people who were closest to him. Thus, he is very sad. Cliché No. 3.

But every so often he can be coaxed into slightly grinning by an old friend, Quinn O’Grady, who has the hots for him and would like to take their friendship a few steps further. Cliché No. 4.

Played by Minka Kelly, 44 (pictured above), Quinn is beautiful, easygoing and best of all, available.

But does he respond in kind? No, even though you can kinda tell he wants to. But dang it, when it comes to expressions of emotions, Staten gets all tongue-tied. Cliché No. 5.

By the end of Episode One of “Ransom Canyon” (the only one I have watched so far) these two lonesome lovers had not yet locked lips, but they came pretty doggone close.

Eventually, the show shifts from the challenges faced by these two lonesome doves to the lives and loves of the teens of Ransom High School.

It’s a clash of the children of the rich landowners vs. the offspring of the blue-collar men who work on the rich men’s ranches and oil plots. Cliché No. 6.

Before you can say “Romeo and Juliet,” a boy from the blue-collar class goes for the girlfriend of a hot-tempered member of the upper crust. And so forth and so on.

The use of these clichés in “Ransom Canyon” does not in any way condemn the show. Instead, they are applied perfectly to make this show as comfortable as possible to watch and enjoy.