Kevin Costner Has The Most Streamed TV Show Of 2021 So Far
Kevin Costner's television series continues to pick up steam on streaming.
This article is more than 2 years old
It is often seen that with time, a once-successful show loses the winning streak of its prime and experiences a constant decline in rating. But Paramount Network’s Yellowstone, starring Oscar-winning Kevin Costner, will soon be entering its fourth season and the fervor around the show is yet to die down. In fact, as per a recent report, even though it will be sometime before the fourth season of the series debuts, Yellowstone is already the most streamed TV show of 2021 on Amazon Prime, Fandango, Google Play, and iTunes. And what’s more, when compared to all top shows on other streamers and digital platforms included in the report, the Paramount series comes out on the top with a wide margin.
As per a detailed report by Flix Patrol, while shows like Cocomelon on Netflix, South Park on HBO, The Simpsons on Disney+ have brought on huge ratings, in comparison to them, Yellowstone’s rating on even one platform is more than theirs. Yellowstone, which stars Wes Bentley, Kelly Reilly, Luke Grimes, Cole Hauser, Gil Birmingham, and of course, the best of all, Kevin Costner, wrapped up its season three finale last year with 5.2 million viewers, becoming the most-watched scripted cable series of 2020. In fact, its fourth season was greenlit long before its season three debuted in light of its ever-rising popularity. To know that the series continues to repeat its incredible feat on streamers and other digital platforms as well is no surprise.
The series follows the Dutton family in Montana, owners of the largest ranch in the United States. Kevin Costner plays John Dutton, the patriarch of the family. He leads them against developers, corporations, and sometimes even politicians who are plotting to get their hands on their property as everything around it is prime real estate.
Many have tried to crack the reason why Yellowstone is such a huge success and why the list of its loyal fans continues to grow. It is not difficult to deduce that the major credit goes to Kevin Costner as the lead, which keeps making more and more people tune in. Even the actor said so on a chat with Popcorn with Peter Travers, where he revealed that he feels that the show would have crumbled and fallen apart if he had said no to the project. He took the “weight on of emotionally not wanting to have the show crumble.”
But what allows people to resonate with Yellowstone, as per Kevin Costner, is that people are drawn to the “still pristine” and “still beautiful” American West and the idea that a lifestyle as simple as the one his character lives is still possible in today’s world. That’s the unique selling point of the show—putting a story in the backdrop of this shared and widespread imagination. Kevin Costner has often credited the success of the series to the idea of seeing wide-open spaces that are free of today’s excessive human encroachment and knowing that a world shown in Yellowstone is still a reality.
While the idyllic beauty of the West and the presence of Kevin Costner is undoubtedly bringing in the lion’s share of the show’s viewers, according to series creator, Taylor Sheridan, it is the authenticity with which they are depicting the world of ranchers and cowboys, as well as bringing his real experiences to the screen that makes their show special. At the same time, he is exceptionally aware of the fact that he has a stellar actor like Kevin Costner leading his show. In a recent chat with Deadline, Sheridan shared that whenever a scene depicts Costner’s character, he wants it to be special and remarkable as he never “ever want it to become ordinary to see Kevin Costner on television.”
When Yellowstone was renewed back in 2020, it was announced that the tentative timeline for the shooting of the fourth season of the series will be June 2021. But Sheridan has confirmed that even now, their plans to start filming in mid-August are a little shaky in the current scenario. So even though season four will be exclusively shot in and around a ranch in an area in Montana where there are no active COVID-19 cases, they are being extra careful to ensure that nothing stops the shoot from wrapping up in time.
