We also have Taylor Sheridan to thank for the fact that westerns are making a big comeback on American television.

He once gave up his acting career and has become one of Hollywood's most in-demand new writers with films like Sicario (2015) and Hell or High Water (2016).

In 2018 he created “Yellowstone”, currently the most successful series on American television, a modern western in which Kevin Costner, as the patriarch of the Dutton family in Montana, defends his lands against access by Native Americans, the US government and Californian urban development yuppies.

With the "1883" series, Sheridan is now picking up pieces that renegotiate the myth of the American West, "pristine" landscapes and cowboy culture.

"He's a cowboy at heart"

"Taylor Sheridan," says Marc Rissmann, "is a cowboy at heart - that's where he comes from, that's what he lives for." The Man in The High Castle stars in Sheridan's ten-part series 1883, Josef, a German émigré who, with his wife and around eighty other people, heads west on the Oregon Trail in search of a better life.

The series is the first of three offshoots (alongside "1883" and "1923" and "Bass Reeves" about the first black Marshall west of the Mississippi), in which Sheridan tells the history of the Duttons and the violent conquest of the American continent by immigrants spread to other parts of the world.

Rissmann describes Sheridan as a "doer", as a "bundle of energy", as someone "who has a clear answer to every question and always has everything in view".

He watched in fascination as Sheridan sat in his director's box and from time to time "hopped down, jumped on his horse and rode over to one of the actors" to give directions.

On a ride together – as part of a two-week “cowboy camp” for the actors at Sheridan's ranch in Texas – Rissmann began to understand this as a way of life.

“The Western was always far away for me, invented stories.

But here it was suddenly very specific.

It was real cowboys who taught us how to ride.”

The fact that this history of Sheridan's ratings hit "Yellowstone" is presented from the perspective of European immigrants at the end of the 19th century has caused displeasure among some critics.

But Sheridan's story, told by seventeen-year-old Elsa Dutton (Isabel May), is first and foremost a story of loss - of indigenous land, of innocence, of trust in God, and at times even the will to live.

Some of the characters in 1883 have already suffered great losses.

For example, Civil War veteran Shea Brennan (Sam Elliott), whose wife and daughter were killed by smallpox, and who is now tasked with leading more than eighty European immigrants from Fort Worth, Texas, to Oregon with his old comrade Thomas (LaMonica Garrett).

Or former Confederate Captain James Dutton (Tim McGraw as the great-grandfather of Kevin Costner's John Dutton), who lost his entire regiment at the Battle of the Antietam and died with his wife Margaret (Faith Hill), teenage Elsa and five-year-old John (Audie Rick ) joins Shea's group.

Or Dutton's sister Claire (Dawn Olivieri), who had to bury her husband and six children and joins the trek west with her daughter Mary Abel (Emma Malouff) for lack of alternatives.