Ransom Canyon offers handsome scenery and enough chemistry to make its cowboy romances briefly appealing. But predictable plotting and a tiresome division of emotional labour keep April Blair’s drama from giving us much reason to stay.
Ransom Canyon knows the appeal of an attractive cowboy with difficulties, and has considerable faith in our willingness to wait while he addresses them. Created by April Blair, with source material by Jodi Thomas, it puts romantic complications at the centre of its Western drama. The proposition is inviting enough: attractive people, open country and relationships that promise to become difficult. It is mildly diverting, but the thin writing gives us too little reason to care about what happens next.
Josh Duhamel, as Staten Kirkland, is the strongest reason to give it a chance. He makes the brooding attractive enough for us to understand the appeal, even when the writing offers little beyond it. Minka Kelly’s Quinn O’Grady gives their romance a capable partner, and the attraction between them is more persuasive than the complications around it. The trouble is that the series relies on that attraction to do work the dialogue and characterisation ought to share.
The division of labour within that romance is harder to forgive than the familiar plotting. Quinn gets to be capable and accommodating; Staten gets to be emotionally unavailable, which the series treats as an attraction requiring patience. We grew irritated with his brooding because her competence so often seemed to excuse it. There is room in a romance for somebody who struggles to speak plainly, but the other person needs wants and failings beyond being equipped to cope with him.
The scenery is a substantial part of the appeal, and cinematographers Tom Clancey and Eric Koretz make it inviting. Their polished images suit the promise of an easy escape, though the prettiness becomes rather uniform. We are given few reasons to feel that life here might be awkward or uncomfortable in ways the romantic plots cannot tidy away. That need not disqualify a soap, but it leaves the performers with more work to do.
Editors Finnian Murray, Jonathan Angus, Katie Ruzicka and Lance Luckey keep the multiple romances moving without making them demanding to follow. The smoothness helps the series pass pleasantly, although it does little to disguise how readily the complications can be anticipated. Jeff Cardoni’s music adds to the comfort without giving the relationships much extra force. The craft is competent throughout, but it tends to reassure us that everything belongs exactly where we expect it.
A Western romance does not owe us a history lesson or an inventory of agricultural hardship. It does owe us people whose attraction survives a little scrutiny, and dialogue that makes their company worth seeking out. Here, too many exchanges serve a familiar romantic situation without making the people involved feel particular. The predictability would matter less if the conversation were sharper: knowing roughly where a couple will end up is no obstacle to enjoying the time spent with them.
The scenery and central pairing will reasonably be enough for some. Those are real pleasures, even if they fade when the characters have to carry a scene through conversation. We cannot recommend staying simply to discover which familiar romantic problem arrives next. Try it only if the cowboy is already a persuasive enough reason.
