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If there’s one thing that television executives know for sure right now, it’s that Taylor Sheridan shows are a sure thing. It’s not only Yellowstone that is bringing audiences in droves; Landman, Sheridan’s latest series for Paramount+, has also proven to be a hit, joining the creator’s similarly successful shows 1883, 1923, Tulsa King, and Mayor of Kingstown. (And others!) He’s a man with a proven track record, and one that’s hard to deny.

He’s also a man with a formula, and Landman succeeds in part because it sticks very close to that formula. Billy Bob Thornton plays Tommy Norris, a landman — hence the series title — for an oil company in West Texas, where he’s surrounded by what the official description of the series describes as “roughnecks and wildcat billionaires.” It is, in other words, another series from Sheridan that mixes a particularly American version of working class masculinity with both the classic macho myth of the One Man Against The World narrative and the glamour of the movie stars in the title role.

It’s what makes Landman work, just as it powers Yellowstone (or did, until Kevin Costner dropped out), and his other series. Each of Sheridan’s shows have a central movie star — Kevin Costner, Billy Bob Thornton, Sylvester Stallone in Tulsa King, Jeremy Renner in Mayor of Kingstown, or Zoe Saldaña in Lioness (1883 has Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, doubling down on the star power) — to draw in the crowds initially, and a reliance on tried-and-tested tropes to keep them there once they’ve arrived; they’re crowdpleasers that work precisely because they stick close to a formula that has, over and over again, been proven to come up trumps. This isn’t a complaint or a condemnation; instead, it’s something that raises a real question: why aren’t more people doing this?

I mean, bluntly, it’s not as if the formula is particularly complex, and yet, no-one seems to be picking up the challenge that Sheridan has thrown down. Where are the other networks and streaming services trying to one-up Sheridan with announcements of shows like Pipeman starring Taylor Kitsch (he’s a fireman in… I don’t know, North Dakota? Sure, why not), or Builder starring Channing Tatum, where he’s a construction worker in rural Pennsylvania who has to deal with corrupt corporations and the troubles of the union alongside his long-suffering wife, Minka Kelly? It feels as if there’s a dearth of competition for one of the few genuine breakout hit creators in television right now, and I can’t quite understand why.

Even better: let’s see one of the genre studios try to weigh into this field. If Star Wars: Skeleton Crew can establish the space suburbs, then why can’t we see what a Lucasfilm version of a Taylor Sheridan show looks like, set in a galaxy far, far away? (Slicer, starring Josh Hartnett as a former Rebel who’s struggling to keep his family’s moisture farm a viable concern on Tatooine! You’re welcome, Lucasfilm.) What does a Marvel take become?

I am, at heart, a fan of formulaic television when done well; there’s a reason why Columbo is so very good, and why Poker Face took that math and made another hit, decades later, after all. All I’m asking is for studio executives to not drag their feet on taking advantage of one of the most successful formulas television has seen in years, and flood the market with knock-offs while the going is good. Is that really too much to ask?

Cowboy up with our key articles to learn and love the hit neo-western series Yellowstone:

• Understanding the idyllic modern cowboy appeal of Yellowstone
• How to watch Yellowstone (and its spinoffs) in order
• A guide to all the Yellowstone spinoffs
• Five shows to watch after Yellowstone