Recommended: American Primeval

Wait... is he using that kid as cover?

American Primeval follows a young woman and her son as they try and cross the Rockies, to reach her husband on the West coast. Well. That's what she says, at least. Between her and her destination are mountains, Indians, the US Army, and the Mormons. 

Guess which faction is worse?

The show is gritty and grounded, although some of the characters are unreasonably kick-ass, but they stop short of going the full John Wick. 

The wilderness is a character unto itself. The wilderness is beautiful... but everywhere humans settle, it becomes a disgusting pig sty. The inhabitants are covered in mud and shit, and only the West Coast immigrants are, momentarily, clean. 

It a grimy, messy, essentially lawless place, where life is cheap, and people are murdered over a nasty look. Hell, the cold, indifferent wilderness looks like a cuddly tabby cat compared to the treacherous monsters living in the forts.

Which tracks with Pinker's The Angels of Our Better Nature. Violence in the American Midwest was insane, both against the Indians and inside the initially male-only settlements of frontiersmen. Once women began to migrate out west in larger numbers, the levels of violence fell dramatically. 

The Mormons present as civilized and devout, but only on the surface. It makes them even more horrible than the brutal pioneer savages they look down upon. 

For the Mormons (at least as they are depicted in the show), God is a fig leaf.

I confess I've never really looked into the early days of Utah. I knew the Mormons settled there, but I had no idea they fielded their own army, or that they were quite so irredeemably nasty. It's a story that's not been told before in a big budget Western, far as I know.

Highly recommended, if you like gritty and uncompromising dramas. I'm not keen on Westerns as a genre in general, but this one was captivating.

I don't think the Mormons are going to be terribly keen on it.