‘Big Sky’: Strong Partners, Weak Premise

“Big Sky” wants to be a tense, character-driven crime series about missing women in Montana. Instead it mostly settles for a procedural with a strong cast and a weak sense of place. The show follows private detective Cassie Dewell and ex-cop Jenny Hoyt as they chase a truck driver who has kidnapped two sisters on a remote highway. When they find out more girls have vanished nearby, the stakes grow, but the storytelling rarely matches them.

The show was created by David E. Kelley and is based on C. J. Box’s “Highway” book series. It ran for three seasons on ABC, premiering November 17, 2020, and ending January 18, 2023. The core partnership between Katheryn Winnick’s Jenny Hoyt and Kylie Bunbury’s Cassie Dewell is the show’s best asset. Their chemistry is real, and the series leans on it heavily to hold together episodes that otherwise feel like filler.

Trailer, via Rotten Tomatoes TV.

Cassie and Jenny Carry the Weight

Katheryn Winnick plays Jenny Hoyt as a sharp-tongued ex-cop with a past she cannot escape. Kylie Bunbury plays Cassie Dewell as a private detective whose methods are less by-the-book than Hoyt’s. Together they form a working relationship that feels lived-in and honest, even when the scripts around them are thin.

J. Anthony Pena’s Deputy Mo Poppernak and Dedee Pfeiffer’s Denise Brisbane round out the local law side of the investigation. Their scenes often feel like they exist to pad the runtime rather than advance the case. The same goes for the recurring cast members, who come and go across seasons without leaving much of an impression.

The Truck Driver Case Opens the Door

The pilot introduces the truck driver who takes the two sisters. It is a strong setup, and the show spends the first few episodes building dread around the idea that he might still be out there. Then the show opens the door to a larger pattern of disappearances, and the focus shifts away from the original victims toward a broader threat.

This is where “Big Sky” starts to lose its grip. The larger pattern of vanishing women should have anchored the whole series. Instead it becomes a device for episodic threats rather than a driving force. The show keeps adding new cases and new suspects, but it never commits to following through on the promise of its premise.

Season One Sets the Pace

The first season introduces the core partnership and establishes the town’s uneasy relationship with outsiders. It also brings in Valerie Mahaffey, Natalie Alyn Lind, Jade Pettyjohn, Ryan Phillippe and Ted Levine as recurring players. The casting is strong, but the season never fully commits to making the town feel like a character in itself.

“The show keeps adding new cases and new suspects, but it never commits to following through on the promise of its premise.”

The pacing is uneven. Some episodes land with real tension. Others drag through extended scenes of exposition that add little. The show’s habit of introducing a new threat and then dropping it is frustrating, especially since the audience has already been told what the real danger is supposed to be.

Seasons Two and Three Stretch the Boundaries

The second season, subtitled “Deadly Trails,” premiered September 21, 2022. It brought in Jensen Ackles as Beau Arlen and Reba McEntire in the third season. The show also added Janina Gavankar, Logan Marshall-Green, and Jamie-Lynn Sigler to the main cast. These additions give the show a stronger ensemble, but they do not solve the underlying problem.

The third season ends the series, and the finale tries to tie off the larger threat that had been hanging over the show since the first episode. Whether it succeeds depends on how willing you are to accept a resolution that arrives late and feels rushed.

The Missing Women Problem

The show’s central problem is that it never fully commits to the missing women pattern it sets up in the first episode. The truck driver case is the engine of the show’s premise, and everything else should feed back into it. Instead the show keeps adding new cases and new suspects, each one treated as its own standalone thread rather than part of a larger pattern.

This is the show’s biggest failure. A show about missing women in Montana should feel like it is living in that world, not just passing through it. “Big Sky” has the cast and the premise to make that work. What it lacks is the discipline to stick to its own rules.

Comparing the Seasons

The table shows the shape of the show’s run. Each season adds new threads without fully resolving the old ones. That is a deliberate choice, but it means the show never builds toward a satisfying payoff.

The Cast Holds Up the Show

The recurring cast deserves credit for carrying the show through its weaker stretches. Brian Geraghty, Jesse James Keitel, John Carroll Lynch, Anja Savcic, and Omar Metwally all appear in the first two seasons. Jamie-Lynn Sigler joins for the last two seasons. Their work is consistent, even when the writing around them is not.

Where the Show Falls Short

The show’s biggest weakness is its inability to commit to its own premise. The missing women pattern is introduced early and then largely abandoned in favor of episodic threats that feel disconnected from one another. This is a show that knows its strongest material and refuses to use it.

The pacing is also inconsistent. Some episodes move quickly and keep the tension high. Others slow to a crawl, spending too much time on setup and not enough on payoff. The result is a series that feels more fragmented than focused.

Final Verdict

“Big Sky” is a show with a strong core and a weak shell. The partnership between Cassie Dewell and Jenny Hoyt is the reason to watch. The larger story about missing women in Montana is the reason it should be better.

The show never fully commits to its premise, and it loses momentum across its three seasons. The final season rushes to resolve a threat that the show had barely developed over its entire run.

ABC · Big Sky · crime series · Streaming · TV Review