CBS Applies the Success of Tracker to Taylor Sheridan’s Marshals - Manga and comics

Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone spin-off Marshals has adopted a case-of-the-week structure similar to CBS’s Tracker, helping the series become one of the network’s strongest scripted performers.

Marshals has changed the formula associated with Taylor Sheridan’s Yellowstone universe by embracing a procedural structure. The series follows Kayce Dutton, played by Luke Grimes, as he works as a U.S. Marshal in Montana while raising his son, Tate, portrayed by Brecken Merrill. Unlike the other Yellowstone-related shows, each episode centers on a new mission for Kayce and his fellow marshals.

That approach closely resembles Tracker, the CBS drama led by Justin Hartley. In Tracker, Colter travels to a different city to investigate a new missing-person case each week. Marshals uses a similar framework, although its stories are shaped by Montana, the Dutton family, and Kayce’s responsibilities as a father. The show also includes a broader storyline involving Tate’s mental well-being.

The format appears to be delivering strong results for CBS. Marshals’ second-season premiere on October 4, 2026, drew 8.2 million viewers and ranked as the No. 1 scripted series on television. Its first CBS-season premiere, broadcast on March 1, attracted 9.52 million viewers, making it the most-watched scripted-series premiere without a football lead-in since 2018, according to Nielsen’s Live+SD Panel + Big Data.

Marshals is the first Yellowstone-related series to air on a major broadcast network rather than a streaming service or cable channel. Its audience performance has remained strong despite mixed reviews: the show currently has a 48% critic score and a 28% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The series is also less directly managed by Sheridan than earlier Yellowstone projects such as 1883 and 1923. Sheridan serves as an executive producer and is credited with creating the series and its characters alongside John Linson, while Spencer Hudnut is the showrunner and an executive producer and creator.

Speaking to members of the Television Critics Association, Hudnut said Sheridan’s influence remains evident through the characters and shared universe, but explained that Sheridan was not intended to be involved in the show’s day-to-day production. Hudnut also said the project was developed specifically to bring Yellowstone to broadcast television in a less traditional network format.

By combining Yellowstone’s characters and setting with a procedural structure familiar from Tracker, Marshals has established a repeatable weekly format while keeping a larger family storyline at its center.

Sources: Comic Book Resources.