# Joe Pickett (2021)

> A Wyoming game warden and his family face a rural town sliding toward economic collapse, where decades of buried schemes begin to surface.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/101490

## Facts

- Seasons: 2
- Episodes: 20
- Episode runtime: 54 min
- Status: Canceled
- Genres: drama, western, crime
- Created by: John Erick Dowdle, Drew Dowdle, C.J. Box
- Network: Spectrum, Paramount+
- Cast: Michael Dorman, Julianna Guill, Skywalker Hughes, Kamryn Pliva, Sharon Lawrence, Vivienne Guynn, Mustafa Speaks, Chad Rook
- TMDB rating: 7.6/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14271652/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: moderate
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: tense, brooding, atmospheric, gritty

## What critics say

Audiences rate the series positively, praising its atmosphere, lead performance and faithful sense of place, with a steady quality across its two seasons.

## Synopsis

Joe Pickett (2021-2023) is an American neo-western crime drama series created by John Erick Dowdle, Drew Dowdle and C.J. Box for Spectrum and Paramount+. Michael Dorman stars as Joe Pickett, a Wyoming game warden who is trying to protect his family while navigating a small rural township on the verge of economic collapse. Julianna Guill plays his wife Marybeth, and Mustafa Speaks plays Nate Romanowski, a figure whose loyalties keep the family in unsettled territory. The engine of the show is the tension between a conservation officer's duty to enforce hunting and wildlife laws and the way local power, money and old grudges reach into every case. Each episode follows Pickett through poaching complaints, shady land deals and fraying alliances, while the larger story peels back decades of schemes and secrets hidden beneath the town's surface. Across two seasons of ten episodes each, the series builds as one continuing story rather than a case-of-the-week format, and its atmosphere is one of quiet dread, wide open skies and mounting moral pressure. Set in present-day rural Wyoming, it is built around vast wildlife and a community in decline. Fans of Longmire, Justified and Yellowstone will find resonance in its blend of western landscape, small town corruption and a lawman caught between family and duty.

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