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After the average reception of Marshals earlier this year, Yellowstone-creator Taylor Sheridan’s next big thing The Madison has finally launched to a warmer reception – though, the series has still landed with a bit of a thud, with critics and audiences alike split between praising some aspects of the rural fantasy and confused by some obvious blindspots. It’s a show that The Wall Street Journal called “inert”, while RogerEbert called it “rock-solid, gripping television.” In other words, it’s pretty divisive.
The Madison follows the same thematic playbook that drove Yellowstone to be one of the most successful TV shows in modern history – a family must band together to thrive in a neo-Western version of the United States – but it’s worth noting that the show actually isn’t part of Sheridan’s connected universe. It was originally going to be, at one point, but now The Madison tells a more concentrated, character-led story of loss.
What is The Madison About?
The series kicks off with Stacy Clyburn (Michele Pfeiffer) and her family living in New York City, enjoying the hustle-and-bustle of the city that never sleeps. Her husband, played by Kurt Russell, finds himself pining for a simpler life, and often retreats to Montana with his brother for boys weekends and fishing trips – something neither Stacy nor the kids have any interest in. After a tragic accident, however, the Clyburns make their way to Montana to bury their father in the place he truly called home, and are confronted with a slower, more down-to-earth way of life – trading Madison Square for the Madison River, as it were.
It’s a grief-laden seachange. At least, that’s the idea, but according to its critics the series is bogged down by heavy-handed writing, lacking characters, and a sometimes overt disdain for anyone unwilling to align themselves with more traditionalist values. Some say it’s Sheridan’s best work, while others call it an example of all his worst tropes magnified.
The series has landed an IMDb score of 8.0 – pretty solid – alongside a 59 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes’ critic-led Tomato Meter. As far as audiences go, the Popcorn Meter sits at 75 per cent as of writing, as well as a 5.5 from Metacritic’s user score.
While opinions are divided, the series has been successful enough for a second season to have already been greenlit: and it was apparently already filmed alongside the first, so we’re likely not going to be waiting five years to see what comes next for the Clyburns.
If you want to know more about what critics and audiences are saying about The Madison, read on.
What Did Critics Like About ‘The Madison’?
While the overall feeling toward the first six episodes of The Madison is pretty mixed, there are definitely some bright spots in the show’s depiction of grief and the healing power of the natural world. Of particular note is the cinematography: The Madison is an absolutely beautiful thing to look at.
This largely comes, as The Hollywood Reporter notes, from the fact that the show’s director Christina Alexandra Voros is a veteran cinematographer that paid extra attention to the series’ shot composition. The result? It’s one of the best looking series on television today, with vast, sweeping landscapes delivered in stunning detail, while smaller, more intimate moments are given a chance to breathe through clever camera work.
“(Voros) captures every frame rapturously, using lens flare and even lens flare rainbows as optical punctuation,” wrote The Hollywood Reporter.
Perhaps the most-praised element of The Madison is the performance of Academy Award-winner Michelle Pfeiffer, however, with The Playlist noting that the best part of the show is “getting to watch Pfeiffer cook across six episodes”, and that “(she) is the only real thing in a show otherwise detached from reality”.
HuffPost agrees, adding that Pfeiffer’s Stacy is the only female character with any true complexity – which is largely owed to a stellar “messy and captivating” performance. Throughout the show’s six episodes, Pfeiffer embodies the grief of a newly-widowed mother with deft skill, all while tangling with her character’s growing appreciation for a world she refused to share with her late husband. It’s a difficult line to straddle, but Pfeiffer manages it with ease.
What Didn’t Critics Like About ‘The Madison’?
While Pfeiffer’s performance delivers a bright spot, the material she’s working with was far less well received. Most critics agree that The Madison’s biggest issue is its script and storytelling – focusing far more on delivering single-note caricatures than fleshed-out and relatable characters, and on a heavy-handed style of storytelling that aims to beat you over the head with Sheridan’s trademark frontier-facing conservative slant.
“(Kurt) Russell aside, no-one else in the cast is anywhere near her level. It’s like Pfeiffer is in a different show entirely, playing a suffering matriarch on HBO while Elle Chapman and Beau Garrett bring a dull, low-level Netflix quality to what’s at hand,” Empire wrote.
It should be noted that, unlike Marshals, Sheridan wrote every episode of The Madison, which is possibly why it feels like such a distillation of his personal style. See, the show is split between two main locations, New York City and Montana, and while every character from the city is depicted as unlikeable and spoiled, those from Montana deliver salt-of-the-Earth wisdom with every breath: seemingly having achieved an inner wisdom city-slickers couldn’t even imagine. There’s often a lack of nuance in Sheridan’s writing, but in The Madison it can feel as though he’s not even trying.
“Everyone recoils when they realise the steak on their plate is elk. It’s that kind of show: Sheridan moralizing about how much richer and realer it is to live in rural Montana than in New York City, where Black men randomly punch white women in the street. It’s obnoxious as hell,” wrote Pajiba.
What are Audiences Saying About ‘The Madison’?
Critics and audiences don’t always agree, of course, and while The Madison is a step away from Sheridan’s prior works in terms of action, it’s clear that loyalists have found something to enjoy here.
“(The Madison is) honestly some of Sheridan’s best work,” wrote one commenter on Reddit’s r/TheMadisonTVSeries. “It’s a completely different vibe compared to the more outlandish, action-packed and sometimes cheesy series he usually writes.”
Another noted that while they were initially turned off by the relatively negative reviews, they found the show was far better than expected and that they “didn’t think that the ‘NYC is the Devil’ bits were as horrible as made out”.
On the broader r/Television subreddit, though, the series has been received far worse, largely echoing the complaints brought up by critics—though without as much restraint, as you can imagine.
“I can’t tell if Sheridan is a bad writer that got lucky a few times or a good writer that realised audiences are too dumb to care if the writing is good. The only thing I do know is that his projects are an excuse to soapbox his dumb opinions and objectify women,” one viewer said, while another noted they gave up after two episodes.
Where Can I Watch ‘The Madison’?
Why not make up your own mind? The Madison is available to stream in Australia on Paramount+. The series premiered on March 14, 2026, and all six episodes are available to stream.
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