Paramount+’s Biggest Franchise Returns With #1 New U.S. Show After Rotten Tomatoes Turnaround

Paramount+, as a streaming service, has at least a few things that others simply don’t have. Not only is it a place where sports fans can get their fix with major football and soccer games without needing a cable subscription, but some of the biggest franchises are exclusive to the platform. Star Trek has been a pillar of Paramount’s library for decades, and the only way to watch almost all of it in one place is on Paramount+, with classic shows and films living alongside the new shows that are still being made. Beyond that, Paramount+ is also home to the larger South Park and Dexter franchises, but those pale in comparison to their biggest.

At the center of Paramount+’s streaming library is the side effect of a bad decision. When Yellowstone premiered in 2018, the streaming rights were sold to Peacock meaning that after the series took off like a rocket none of the streaming viewership was on Paramount+. Since then, the series has expanded, giving Paramount+ a bigger slice of the entire franchise but one with mixed results. Now, though, Yellowstone’s latest series, the spinoff Dutton Ranch, has arrived and is not only dominating the streaming charts but is earning the best reviews of the series in years.

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Paramount+’s Dutton Ranch Dominates the Charts & Earns Great Reviews

Earlier this week, the first two episodes of Dutton Ranch premiered on Paramount+, giving the Yellowstone franchise not only its latest spinoff series but the story that many fans were the most eager to see. After the final season of the flagship Yellowstone show, the Dutton family was scattered, their original ranch was sold to the Broken Rock Reservation, and Kevin Costner’s character was dead and buried. That said, two of the surviving characters, Beth and Rip, were left on the board, and the new show is picking up from where the original series ended their story and letting these fan-favorites keep going.

According to Flix Patrol, the first two episodes of Dutton Ranch have immedaitely become a hit on Paramount+, with the show climbing to the #1 position on their TV streaming charts since its premiere. Not only has the series grabbed the top spot, but it’s held it every day since, and with new episodes arriving every Friday through the July 4th weekend, it could very well keep that top slot for weeks on end.

An even bigger sign of the show’s success is that it has eclipsed the other Yellowstone spinoff/sequel series, Y: Marshals, on the charts. Though that series has a season finale set to arrive next week with twelve episodes already available for streaming, it’s sitting as the #2 show on Paramount+, well behind Dutton Ranch. One reason for this is that the series, which focuses on Luke Grimes as Kayce Dutton, has had quite a mixed reception, to put it mildly. Critically, the show holds a rotten 42% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and an even worse 28% audience rating on the platform. The series has been criticized for being more of a procedural than Yellowstone’s trademark serialized crime dramas, making it feel completely out of place with other shows and not exactly what fans were expecting.

On the flipside, Dutton Ranch itself acts as a sequel to Yellowstone, picking up on big plot threads while moving the characters to all-new parts of the country with all-new threats. As of this writing, Dutton Ranch has an 85% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an 80% audience score, a clear rebound for the franchise that is already making waves on the streaming charts.