Mr. Yellowstone’s latest show is for the ladies (who want to catch terrorists)

Taylor Sheridan’s TV empire evokes the image of a man knocking back a beer and grunting on the vast plains of the West.murica with a mixture of admiration and sadness, before returning his gaze to a weathered copy of one of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s celebrated novels. Taylor Sheridan knows America better than you do: its power and majesty, its joys and sorrows, who celebrates it, and most importantly, who doesn’t.

In the new Paramount Plus series Special Ops: Lioness, Sheridan turns his contemplative gaze to the women of the armed forces. Supposedly based on a real CIA task force, Lioness follows a team that places female agents in the lives of women close to murder targets. It’s a nasty subject, whose morals are briefly acknowledged while lightheartedly asserting its necessity and launched headfirst into the flesh of the show: a character-driven spy thriller.

Lioness revolves around two women: Joe (Zoe Saldaña), who leads the Lioness squad, and new recruit Cruz (Laysla De Oliveira), a driven woman with nowhere to turn but the Marines when her abusive boyfriend finally goes too far. The first episode — the only one in the two-part premiere to be made available to critics in advance — is mainly concerned with grounding the characters in the audience’s mind during moments of crisis.

Viewers meet Joe during a botched operation, when a Lioness operative is created by enemy soldiers and Joe decides to drone the entire scene, saving the Lioness from torture and humiliation while also protecting the secrecy of her program and endangering none of her support team in what would have likely been a botched rescue. It immediately indicates what kind of person Joe is; while most protagonists in this type of show are willing to cross the line to get the job done, Joe crosses the line to protect her team. Even when others can’t see, that’s what she does.

Meanwhile, fueled by a rage brought on by a life of abuse and missed opportunities, Cruz impresses her Navy recruiters with her tenacity and physical prowess and is almost immediately recommended for the Lioness program. It’s not a natural fit: Joe’s team is clandestine and not built around the earah Brotherhood of the Marines, and Cruz is shocked by the way Joe keeps her at bay. Her doubts, however, remain limited to technology for the time being.

Admittedly, the first episode of Lioness ends when the actual spying begins, and as Cruz becomes embedded in her target, it’s possible the series turns out to be more thoughtful than in the premiere. As the series progresses, Spycraft’s ugly work could expose Cruz to women who were abused and abused for the way she was – the way she is in the Lioness program – and become a better story for it. As easy as it is to paint Sheridan’s work with a broad brush, his TV empire is more complex than Cabela’s July 4th sale, it seems from a distance, occasionally turning to view the storm clouds on the edge of the American Dream.

For now, Special Ops: Lioness is just 24-lite, a fast-paced, action-packed drama with a generous roster of movie stars (Nicole Kidman appears as Joe’s government handler and Morgan Freeman shows up later). It’s not convincing enough to overcome the shortcomings of this kind of story – the jingoism, the Foreign piss filter, and so on – but strong performances and a tight eight-episode run can deliver something worthwhile. It’s at least fun to watch a Sheridan show that isn’t about a goddamn farm.

Special Ops: Lioness premieres on Paramount Plus on July 23.