There is a specific kind of pain that comes from watching intelligent television collapse into stupidity in real time. Marshals is not that. Marshals never had the altitude to fall from. It arrived stupid, stayed stupid, and will presumably be renewed for a second season of stupidity, because nine and a half million people tuned in for the premiere and the CBS machine does not ask whether those viewers enjoyed themselves.

The Yellowstone franchise has been expanding in every direction simultaneously — prequels in 1883 and 1923, a Kayce Dutton procedural in Marshals, the Pfeiffer-led Madison reconfigured as a standalone. None of them have replicated the original’s combination of melodrama, landscape, and moral pressure. Dutton Ranch, premiering May 15 on Paramount+, may be the closest anyone gets to a genuine continuation. Beth Dutton and Rip Wheeler are in South Texas now. They are building something of their own, away from the wreckage of the Montana saga, and running into a rival ranch operation backed by Ed Harris and Annette Bening.