Netflix’s hit new drama series American Primeval wants you to know just how brutal and bloody the Old West really was, writes streaming columnist NICK OVERALL.

The six-episode American Primeval takes place during the Utah War in 1857, a conflict sparked by tensions between Mormon settlers and the federal government over land ownership.

Most notorious from the war was the Mountain Meadows Massacre, where a Mormon militia murdered around 120 settlers trying to make their way to California.

This harrowing setting is where the protagonists of American Primeval find themselves, a mother and son desperate to make it across the frontier and into a new and better life.

Helping them is Isaac Reed, a skilled, gruff mountain man who takes pity on their plight.

Like a Cormac McCarthy novel brought straight to screen, this show pulls no punches in its depiction of the horrors of the time period.

There’s an impressive sense of cinematic scale that makes it well worth a try for anyone interested in the history or the genre.

MEANWHILE, a new drama series on Binge is also confronting audiences, though with a very different kind of setting.

The Pitt offers an inside look at the grim reality of working inside an emergency room.

Set in Pittsburgh, the story follows Michael “Robby” Rabinavitch, a doctor who works at a fictional trauma hospital and who is still recovering from traumas he experienced during the pandemic. He’s played by Noah Wyle, who medical drama fans may know from the long-running series ER, which first premiered in 1994.

The Pitt has a very different gimmick though.

Each of the 15 episodes takes place over one hour of real time that together tell the story of one entire day in the emergency room.

Episode 1 is simply titled “7AM” and covers the first hour of the day. The second episode is “8AM” and so on. The idea is that if a character has appeared in three episodes the audience understands they’ve been at the hospital for three hours.

It’s a simple yet fascinating gimmick that hasn’t been seen before and it certainly makes The Pitt stand out from the crowd. The writers have cleverly used this central idea of time to build tension and create an instant connection with their audience.

To what extent the show can be called “realistic” I certainly don’t have the medical knowledge to say, but there is a sense of authenticity here not present in other medical dramas.

In some ways I was reminded of The Bear, a show which depicts the frantic chaos of working in a kitchen with an aim of capturing the real-life experience. The Pitt has a similar intense, fast-paced energy going for it with even higher stakes. Here, people’s lives are on the line and it makes for some telly that’s hard to look away from.

APPLE TV Plus is continuing to pump out big-budget drama with A-list actors, but strangely doesn’t seem to be promoting them.

The latest series is Prime Target, and features breakout star Leo Woodall (One Day, The White Lotus) as a maths genius caught up in an espionage plot.

It all kicks off when Woodall’s character Edward Brooks discovers a pattern in prime numbers that allows him to access every computer in the world.

Of course, any major power that catches wind of his ingenious discovery either wants it or wants to destroy it.

Woodall continues his run of charismatic performances but the writing he’s given isn’t quite up to scratch, leaving Prime Target to fall behind in an era of spy thriller oversaturation.

The star power here will still bring plenty of subscribers though.

It begs the question, why does Apple TV Plus not promote its shows like other streaming platforms?

Unlike Netflix, Binge, Disney Plus and the others, Apple has made the bold move to build its library entirely out of original productions, rather than fill it with films and television shows.

Perhaps it’s playing the long game, hoping that one day it will have so much content available on the platform that it will result in total market dominance.

Does slow and steady win the streaming race? Time will tell.