Half the rated reviews are 10 stars and half are 8.
I must be missing something.
The show certainly had potential (did it inspire "Yellowstone"?), but the writing is awful.
Almost every episode is inconsistent with what had happened previously, and the individual characters change their personality to suit the current episode's plot.
It's like there was no "show bible" for the series, and each episode's scriptwriter (and there were many) based their writing on the initial description of the series.
In one episode Danni sees the race as scary and dangerous, and warns people not to enter the annual race. She seems to have forgotten that in an earlier episode, she had disguised herself as a man and entered the race (and won!).
Some characters are bad guys in one episode and good guys in another, with the other characters completely oblivious to their past behaviour.
One female character doesn't even own a dress, but in later episodes she almost always wears one.
The dog "Patch" gets replaced by a completely different colour dog, as if the director (and there were many) had never seen any previous episodes.
Bringing rail service to town is a major part of the plot in one season, yet in a later episode the plot involves a rotting abandoned rail bridge.
People start new jobs without the loss of their previous job affecting anything. Both the publisher and the editor of the local newspaper (which has no other staff) leave, but somehow the town still has a paper.
All of the McGregors continually find new major activities and commitments (taking over the newspaper, buying a livery stable, becoming a teacher), but whatever it was they used to spend their time doing no longer matters.
New characters appear then disappear without any reason (other than to meet the requirements of one or two episodes).
A family of Ukrainian refugees buys the local general store and after some initial difficulties they are eventually welcomed by the whole community. But having served their purpose for that one episode, they are never seen again, and a different person is running the store.
Old characters disappear and may or may not return dozens of episodes later. Other characters are left in limbo.
One main character takes a vacation to Ireland, her husband occasionally mentions her, but it's mostly like she had never existed.
Another main character gets lost in the desert, and remains prominently in the opening credits for the entire next season, but nothing.
Individual episodes might be worth watching, but as a series this program has far too many loose ends and inconsistencies.
