By Netflix are doubling down on efforts to compete with award-winning cinema and television. This year sees the release of their Oscar-tipped black and white film, Roma by Gravity director Alfonso Cuarón and last month future Bond director Cary Fukunaga released his dark sci-fi series, Maniac.
Now, the Coen Brothers are the latest big directorial names to be wooed by the streaming service with their six-part Western anthology, The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs.
The series is a collection of tales about the American frontier - the first days of European settlement on the Atlantic coast - with each episode focusing on a different storyline. In the titular instalment, the story of a "sharp-shooting songster" is explored. In 'Near Algodones', a wannabe bank robber gets his comeuppance and 'Meal Ticket' is a gothic tale about two weary travelling performers.
Elsewhere 'All Gold Canyon' is a story about a prospector mining for gold, 'The Gal Who Got Rattled' follows a woman on a wagon train who finds an unexpected promise of love and in 'The Mortal Remains' a crew of strangers are served justice on a carriage ride.
The cast of characters that feature in these wild tales includes James Franco, Liam Neeson, Zoe Kazan, Brendan Gleeson and Tom Waits.
After premiering at Venice Film Festival, where it won won the prestigious Golden Osella Award for Best Screenplay, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs premiered last night at New York Film Festival where it has earned strong reviews and is currently sitting on an impressive 94% on Rotten Tomatoes.
In a four star review for The Guardian Peter Bradshaw called the series a, "hilarious, beautifully made, very enjoyable and rather disturbing anthology of stories from the old west."
"There’s barely a forehead that doesn’t get a bullet in it sooner or later," he adds.
The series has been brainchild of the Coen brothers for 25 years and is a welcome return to form for the duo who, who despite their slew of awards for Fargo, failed to impress audiences with their two most recent films Suburbicon and Hail, Caesar!
Though many have praised The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs similarities with the Coens' Westerns No Country For Old Men and True Grit, the series plays with different genres and intriguing tonal shifts across episodes that vary in length from 12 to 35 minutes.
"That's an artefact of what a strange animal it is," Joel Coen said while speaking at New York Film Festival recently, "and [Netflix] didn't know – none of us really knew – what to call it or how to classify it,"
'The Ballad Of Buster Scruggs' will be available on Netflix from 16 November
