He’s looking at the camera again and needs nothing more than charisma and a hat. American actor Harrison Ford has not yet returned in his most popular role of archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones. However, he became part of one of the most popular television series in America today.
From this Tuesday, viewers from eight European countries, including the Czech Republic, can now watch the Western saga 1923, as well as many other programs and films, in the Skyshowtime video library.
Harrison Ford as Jacob Dutton drives through a town in the middle of the American state of Montana. And even though he and his companions are passing parked cars and the year is 1923, time has not moved much here since the days of the Wild West. The United States is in the middle of a crisis, local ranchers often take justice into their own hands, and things are boiling in the locales even without booze, as Prohibition applies throughout the country.
“This family has always been haunted by violence,” says the narrator, Dutton’s wife, played by Helen Mirren, in the opening of the pilot. Right from the start, she shows that she can handle anything by herself with the help of a well-aimed shot.
The Dutton family in question is currently one of the most watched TV dynasties overseas. The series is already the third effort created by Taylor Sheridan about this family for Paramount. This was made famous by films from remote parts of the world where clearly defined rules do not apply, whether it is the drama Sicario, where the police clash with drug cartels on the US-Mexico border, or the film Wind River from the snowy wilderness of the state of Wyoming, where an FBI agent investigates the death of an Indian girls.
With the Western series Yellowstone, the first venture about the Dutton family, the author transferred his penchant for exploring worlds from the edge of civilization to the screen. Yellowstone began in the summer of 2018. When the fifth season started last November, it broke all records for overseas television.
The first episode attracted over 12 million viewers, more than any live series of the year. The success was all the greater because it was a pay cable TV production that beat the biggest national channels like CBS, NBC or ABC.
The harsh series with Kevin Costner in the role of John Dutton was able to appeal to an older audience with its setting and melodramatic tone, and was even more popular in states where more conservative Republicans win elections. At the same time, Taylor Sheridan, who, regardless of the place and time of the story, always writes or shoots a variation on a western, as usual solved current socio-political problems. Yellowstone became a hit also because, compared to many others, its popularity with viewers and critics increased with each subsequent series.
Last December, the stories of the Dutton family continued with the American Civil War series called 1883. In the current latest addition called 1923, Harrison Ford shows the roots of the family, where there was never a shortage of problems.
As his serial wife Cara observes at the sight of one of the offspring frolicking on a wild horse, “Why does danger bring so much pleasure to men?” And the audience will examine this together with her and the creators. Right from the pilot, however, it shows that sadism or pleasure in violence is not only inherent to wiry guys in hats.
The storyline from a school where nuns re-educate Native American girls with the help of beatings during classes is in the spirit of Sheridan’s work, which, despite the ubiquitous brutality, is sensitive to outsiders, minorities, and the oppressed. And he will continue to do so. At the beginning of the month, the television announced that they will make a second season of 1923 due to its great success.
The series 1923, 1883 and Yellowstone are three of the many items that the Skyshowtime video library offers to Czech viewers from Tuesday. The recent big-budget films Top Gun: Maverick and Jurassic World: Dominion are at the forefront of its offering.
The series 1923 is on Skyshowtime with Czech subtitles. | Video: Skyshowtime
Here, viewers will also find the action films The Northman, Ambulance, Mission: Impossible – Nation of Goons, last year’s Downton Manor: The New Era, the animated Outlaw 2: The Villain Comes, the series Halo and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds or other works by director Taylor Sheridan, including the Tulsa series King, featuring Sylvester Stallone in a major television role for the first time.
The platform attracts not only content, which includes selected works of Paramount, Universal and DreamWorks studios, but also an introductory price of 89 crowns per month, which is half the amount of the standard subscription amount of 179 crowns. And significantly less than what competitors Netflix, HBO Max, Disney+ or Czech Voyo charge.
Skyshowtime also wants to support local production in 20 European countries. Some original European series, such as Slovak Víťaz directed by Jan Hřebejk and twenty other projects, will be taken over from Warner Bros. Discovery and its HBO Max platforms. And he plans to film his own.
The arrival of a newcomer to the Czech market shows how confusing the current “audiovisual terrain” is. While listeners can usually find music on Spotify, for the time being, film and series production is more like a minefield where nothing is certain. The proof is already that one of the most popular series in America has not yet been shown legally in our country.
The terrain is also uncertain because, while a few years ago the fledgling Disney+ platform pulled its shows from competitors led by Netflix in order to offer everything exclusively on its own streaming service, it is now considering selling licenses for at least part of its work again. Which leads many viewers to cancel and renew their subscriptions from month to month depending on where and how the offer changes. The one from Skyshowtime currently has around 600 movies and hundreds of series. At least it’s worth a try, even considering the introductory price.
