1883 on PARAMOUNT PLUS
1883 is a story that’s been told many times before, but seldom has it been told so well. Like so many Americans in the late 1800s, these American families were fleeing poverty. Travelling across wild hostile and untamed plains for months at a time seeking a better life. You can’t help but make a connection with, and feel a certain empathy for the Dutton family.
When there’s nowhere else to go, you just have to keep going. When the only choice is to live or die, you choose living, however bleak that living maybe. Is it the hope that keeps you alive, or the hope that kills you?
Elsa Dutton shown flirting with Comanche warrior Sam (left) and together with Sam as part of a couple (right). As the decades pass America recounts its history without omitting relationships between the races.
American Primeval / NETFLIX
While 1883 gives you hope, American Primeval provides no such luxury, it’s just bleak! The harsh realities of the wild west in 1857 are omnipresent. Cowboys killing indians, Indians scalping cowboys, and a whole lot of killing. The past America never wants to forget is re-told again. Perhaps calling it a whole lotta killing is an injustice. It’s a reflection of how bleak the times were and is superbly acted, with individual scenes quite brilliantly crafted.
