Billy Bob Thornton is a strong 'Landman' – but the show's women are often caricatures

Billy Bob Thornton is a strong 'Landman' – but the show's women are often caricatures toggle caption Emerson Miller/Paramount+ There is no one who plays the world-weary working man in a white-collar job quite like Billy Bob Thornton. On Paramount+'s engaging new drama series, Landman, his pissed off, cynic-with-a-heart-of-gold character is Tommy Norris, a crisis executive with fictional M-Tex Oil company. It's Tommy's job to troubleshoot M-Tex's crews of roughneck pump workers, securing leases from landowners allowing the company to pump oil from desolate swatches in the Permian Basin — an area in West Texas and southeastern New Mexico considered the highest producing oil field in the U.S. That means Tommy does everything from negotiate a lease agreement with members of a Mexican drug cartel — while blindfolded and bound like prize turkey — to accidentally crushing the tip of his pinky finger while shutting off a valve to keep a burning pump fire at bay. Based on Landman co-creator Christian Wallace's hit podcast Boomtown, the show manages a unique magic trick: getting us to care about a profit-obsessed oil company that Tommy admits is sending roughnecks to work dangerous wells that couldn't pass federal labor standards, ending the first episode Sunday with an accident that kills three of them.