1923 (TV series)

1923 is an American Western drama television series. The series is a prequel to the Paramount Network series Yellowstone and serves as a sequel to the series 1883, with Isabel May reprising her role from the latter as narrator Elsa Dutton.
The first season premiered on December 18, 2022, on Paramount+ and consists of eight episodes. The second and final season premiered on February 23, 2025, and consists of seven episodes.
The series follows a generation of the Dutton family in 1923, during a time of various hardships including Prohibition, drought, and the early stages of the Great Depression, which affected Montana long before the Wall Street Crash of 1929.
It was announced in February 2022 that a second Yellowstone prequel series had been ordered titled 1932 that would succeed the series 1883. In June, the series was renamed to 1923. In December 2022, Taylor Sheridan explained "No one has had the freedom I've had since Robert Evans ran Paramount," and discussed the 1923 production cost: "I would argue that 1883 was the most expensive first season of a TV show ever made. This was much more expensive. Much more expensive." The series was predicted to cost between $30–35 million per episode. The series is set to run for two seasons with eight episodes each. In February 2023, the series was renewed for a second season.
To establish the continuity of the Dutton family saga that began with 1883, Sheridan continued to use the 1883 character Elsa Dutton, voiced by Isabel May, as the narrator for 1923.
In May 2022, Helen Mirren and Harrison Ford were cast to star in the series. They had previously starred together 36 years prior in The Mosquito Coast. Ford, as revealed in a February 2023 interview with James Hibberd of The Hollywood Reporter, took up the offer to play Jacob Dutton despite saying in 2002 that he worked only once a year, citing the COVID-19 pandemic and his commitments to the titular role of the long-delayed Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny as reasons why he had not done as much work as he wished and wanted to try new things. As with his role in Shrinking, Ford accepted the role before there was a script, trusting that Sheridan would deliver a good one. In a Deadline Hollywood interview, Sheridan explained he got Ford to fly down in his own plane to Sheridan's ranch, and told him "[the script] ain't written yet and you got to commit to it now. I need to know who I'm writing for... I poured about two bottles of wine down him. He said yes". Then Sheridan continued, "Then came Helen [Mirren], and same thing. Have a glass of wine".
In September 2022, Sebastian Roché, James Badge Dale, Darren Mann, Marley Shelton, Michelle Randolph, Brian Geraghty, Aminah Nieves, and Julia Schlaepfer were added to the cast.
Pre-production began in Butte, Montana in July 2022, Filming was scheduled to begin on August 22, also in Butte, since that city was the stand-in for Bozeman, Montana. Principal photography took place across Southwest Montana, with many Montana-set scenes shot in the same locations as Yellowstone. Additional scenes were filmed in Kenya, Malta, South Africa, and Tanzania. Some of the scenes set on the ocean liner, RMS Majestic, were filmed on the RMS Queen Mary, which is now a floating hotel docked in Long Beach, California.
Filming of the second season was delayed due to the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike and the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Filming for the second season began in Austin, Texas on July 8, 2024 and concluded on September 26, 2024. Production moved to Butte, Montana in October and continued until the end of November.
The first season of 1923 premiered on December 18, 2022, on Paramount+. The second season premiered on February 23, 2025.
On the review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, 1923 holds a 90% approval rating with an average rating of 7.0/10, based on 39 reviews by critics. The website's consensus reads, "Distinguished by the ineffable star power of Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, 1923 is another solid if unrelentingly grim addition to Taylor Sheridan's Yellowstone universe." On Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, the series has received a score of 67 out of 100 based on 15 critic reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".
According to Paramount, the debut episode brought in 7.4 million viewers in both linear and streaming telecasts, making it Paramount+'s biggest debut ever.