'Taylor Sheridan meets Sergio Leone': an eight-episode western you can binge in a day
If bounty hunters, vengeance and morally grey heroes are your poison, this true Spaghetti Western-style series is one you can polish off in a single day.
We all know Taylor Sheridan played a huge hand in resurrecting the whole neo-Western vibe a few years back, dragging the gunslinging genre from its Sergio Leone roots into the 2020s and making it feel fresher, darker, and a lot grittier. Predictably, that spark triggered a fresh wave of Westerns, from reinvented classics through to things with their own oddball twists. Quietly tucked amongst them is That Dirty Black Bag – an AMC+ series from 2022 that, despite a strong leading duo, seemed to come and go almost unnoticed.
‘That Dirty Black Bag’ premiered on AMC+ in 2022 and was meant to run for three seasons, but only got one before vanishing into the sunset.
Head Hunters and High Body Counts
Now, if you’re a fan of morally tangled main characters and Old West settings with a bit of blood and grit to spice things up, honestly, this series might be right up your alley. The setup’s practically an affectionate homage to spaghetti Westerns, right down to the widescreen vistas, tense silences, and absolutely unapologetic levels of carnage. Dominic Cooper (who you might know from Captain America) and Douglas Booth (from The Dirt) headline the cast. Booth, in particular, gets saddled with the unenviable task of dragging around a sack full of severed heads for most of the series — something his character reckons is just practical: you get paid by the corpse, but a head’s easier to lug back for bounty.
The show doesn’t try to disguise where it’s taking inspiration from. Instead, it leans into the clichés and just owns them. Expect dramatic, near-operatic music and sweeping, sun-baked cinematography — they shot on location in Morocco, Italy, and Spain, which provides dust, danger, and the necessary backdrop for every brooding standoff and sudden burst of violence. It’s stylish, looks expensive, and deliberately echoes Leone’s outlaw playgrounds, only with a bit more grit and splatter. Some reviewers claim it’s actually too gory for its own good. Personally, that’s usually a good sign in a Western, but fair warning all the same.
An Almost Series That Wasn’t
Despite all the violence and the genre love letter stuff, the show barely made a ripple ratings-wise. Here’s the odd part: critics actually rated it pretty well — it managed a solid 80% on Rotten Tomatoes. Viewers, for the most part, were on board too. But parking it on AMC+ essentially doomed it to obscurity, and as a result, it only ever got that single outing. The frustrating thing is, it was apparently pitched and structured as a full three-season arc. Scripts even got started for season two later in 2022, but absolutely nothing materialised in the end — so officially, it’s not been ‘cancelled’, just left rotting out back, and everyone’s quietly moved on.
- Dominic Cooper as the corrupt sheriff, shifting between dubious authority and straight-up villainy
- Douglas Booth as the bounty hunter, practically swimming through blood and tragedy the whole way
The flipside: even though the longer saga’s unfinished, the first (and only) season mostly stands on its own, so you won’t feel too short-changed if you’re just after an entertaining long weekend binge. Just don’t go in expecting narrative closure — if you can handle unfinished business and a high body count, there’s a good time to be had here. No fuss, no filler, all Western excess.
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