• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, February 27, 2026

The sprawling saga of the “Yellowstone” Dutton family gets the CBS crime-fighting treatment in a new offshoot of the “Yellowstone” universe premiering Sunday.

The show is called “Marshals,” also known as “Y: Marshals” -- the “Y” standing for “Yellowstone.”

With an eye toward assisting the advertising industry in any way it can, the TV Blog suggests a marketing tie-in with Marshalls, the off-price department store chain, in which “Y: Marshals” becomes “Why Marshalls?” The answer: “Bargains, brand-names and beauty.” 

If this were to come to pass, the show the store chain would be sponsoring is a straight-up horse opera produced within the formulaic confines of all CBS law-enforcement dramas.

“Marshals” centers on Kayce Dutton (played by Luke Grimes, above photo, center). On the “Yellowstone” family tree, he is one of the two sons of John Dutton III (Kevin Costner), the patriarch of the Dutton Montana ranch dynasty. 

In the premiere episode of “Marshals” that the TV Blog previewed on Thursday, the only other character from “Yellowstone” to make an appearance is Kayce’s son, Tate -- still played by Brecken Merril -- who will be a series regular. 

In “Marshals,” Tate is now a moody teen stemming mainly from the death of his mother -- Kayce’s wife.

Kayce’s is pretty moody himself. Kayce, a retired Navy Seal, is now running a ranch and living out in the boonies.

He wishes to lead a nonviolent life after encountering so much of it in his military service. But a friend from the Seals now working as a U.S. marshal in Montana, recruits Kayce to help him and his team track down some bad guys in a remote wilderness reachable only on horseback.

The team is where the CBS formula kicks in. Like so many other crime-fighting teams in CBS dramas, this diverse group of super-marshals are headquartered in a former industrial space that doesn’t look like much from the outside, but inside, the team has all the bells and whistles that all of the other shows have.

This allows them to identify perps in mere seconds using facial-recognition software that makes these miraculous identifications possible even when a subject’s face is almost entirely concealed.

These instances characterize all of the CBS crime-fighting dramas. The breathtaking swiftness with which they take place is rarely credible.

But from a production standpoint, they help to move the stories along to their conclusion in a 40-minute time frame. Plus, the formula works, so why change it?

Episode One of “Marshals” sets up the uneasy relationship between the whites and native-Americans of the area -- a gap that Kayce is uniquely capable of bridging because his late wife was a respected member of the tribe.

Like many other such dramas on CBS and elsewhere, “Marshals” does not stay still for long. After the computer work is finished in minutes, then come the shootouts. 

The action in “Marshals” is rendered in the manner of violent videogames. These action sequences are as clichéd as the rest of the show. 

With the “Yellowstone” universe as its foundation, how can it fail?

“Marshals” premieres Sunday, March 1, at 8 p.m. Eastern on CBS and Paramount+.