The trailer for Netflix’s Ultraviolent series “American Primeval” promises to show “America like never before.” But as fans of frontier stories know, there’s really nothing new under the Western sun.

The series, which premiered Thursday, is viscerally more brutal than “Deadwood,” “Godless,” “Yellowstone” or any other recent TV Western, averaging multiple murders and gaping wounds each episode. Set in the middle of the Utah War of 1857-58, it features four groups of people – Native Americans, white pioneers, the U.S. Army and Brigham Young’s followers in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints – all desperately fighting for survival. They are also at each other’s throats and are willing to do almost anything to live to see another day.

The plot is triggered by a real (and really bloody) event: the Mountain Meadows massacre, in which members of the church militia slaughtered around 120 members of an emigrant train. Characters struggling through the aftermath include a non-militia couple from the church (Dane DeHaan and Saura Lightfoot-Leon); a fugitive from the law and her son (Betty Gilpin and Preston Mota); the grizzled white man who guides them through the chaos (Taylor Kitsch); a Shoshone warrior bent on revenge (Derek Hinkey); and a bounty hunter who seems to kill for both pleasure and profit (Jai Courtney).

They’re not a bunch you’d want to turn your back on. However, they have role models in film, television, literature and the story on which the series is based.

“American Primeval” is best viewed as an apotheosis of extreme Westerns of the past, works that strive to go beyond sanitized frontier myths and depict the carnage that was never far from everyday life in the West. Below is a brief guide to these stories, a sort of introduction to Primeval, or a complementary list of what you should read and watch before, during, or after the show. Some tell similar stories. Others address similar themes. Handle them carefully.

Book/TV series

“Under the Banner of Heaven”

Both the non-fiction book by Jon Krakauer (2003) and the FX limited drama (2022) tell the true story of Ron and Dan Lafferty, fundamentalist Latter-day Saints who, claiming to have acted on God’s instructions, married their wife Allan’s brother, Brenda, murdered Lafferty and their 15-month-old daughter Erica in 1984. But “Banner” also includes accounts of the Mountain Meadows massacre, providing valuable information cultural and historical context for “American Primeval.” Young, then governor of the Utah Territory, was eager to claim a church homeland and declared martial law in response to U.S. military activity in the region. The ensuing attack by the church militia, carried out with the help of Southern Paiutes, is depicted in Episode 1 of “Primeval” with axe-wielding, blood-draining ferocity that sets the tone for everything that follows. It’s a declaration of intent: This is going to be bad.

Book

“The Crazy Stone”

Set in the horrific terrain of post-Civil War Texas, this 2023 novel by Elizabeth Crook introduces a young woman whose characteristics and circumstances are very similar to those of Sara Rowell (Gilpin) in Primeval. Every woman is on the run with her little son. Like Sara, in “The Madstone,” Nell accepts the help of a resourceful man who falls in love with her combination of courage and tenderness. Nell’s protector, 19-year-old Benjamin, is much gentler than Kitsch’s John Wick-like Isaac. But he is just as enthusiastic and just as determined to get his refugee to safety. Crook is a treasure trove of Texas letters, his voice reminiscent of figures like Charles Portis and Mark Twain. Although this voice belongs to her first-person narrator, Benjamin, it is her heroine’s desperate journeys that set everything in motion.

“American Primeval” is, among other things, a captivity narrative. Unlike “The Searchers,” “Primeval” does not depict or imply racial mixing; In this 1956 film, directed by John Ford and starring John Wayne, it was considered a fate worse than death for a white woman to have sexual relations with an indigenous man. If anything, Primeval is something of a corrective to Ford’s canonized film, which, depending on how you look at it, is either a film about racism or a racist film. When Wayne’s Ethan Edwards finally tracks down his niece Debbie (Natalie Wood) and frees her from her Comanche captors, you’re not sure whether he’ll take her home or kill her. Primeval indeed.

Book/Film

“The Revenant”

American Primeval was written by Mark L. Smith, who also co-adapted Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s 2015 big-screen adaptation of Michael Punke’s 2002 epic. But you can see the through lines without even looking at the credits. These are harsh, cold, unforgiving environments — “The Revenant” is set in 1820s Montana and South Dakota — where everyone seems to be trying to track down and kill everyone else. Both stories are unusually accurate in their sense of hostile inclusion, with French pioneers, Native American tribes, and white Americans in a state of constant hostility. And both versions make a point of depicting the customs of these tribes (in “Primeval,” primarily the Shoshone people; in “The Revenant,” primarily the Arikara and Pawnee). In these worlds, the West is something to survive, not conquer.

TV series

“Deadwood”

Honey, we blew up the Western. Without this poetically profane HBO series (2004-2006) and its cinematic sequel (2019), it is hard to imagine “Primeval” or one of the other dirty revisionist TV Westerns of recent years – Shea Whigham’s baroque capitalist fortress owner, Jim Bridger, in “Primeval ” could be a cousin of Ian McShane’s pragmatically ruthless Al Swearengen. And yet “Deadwood,” created by David Milch and set in 1870s South Dakota, is almost gentle compared to “Primeval.” (The film, also written by Milch, was directed by Daniel Minahan.) Yes, Swearengen has his crew feed fresh corpses to Mr. Wu’s wild boars. Yes, it’s best to pack warm clothes for a nighttime walk on these unpaved roads. But Milch et al., thanks largely to the F-bombs and C-words, have a sense of humor that stands in stark contrast to the self-seriousness of “Primeval.”

For many years, Richard Slotkin’s dense but highly rewarding nonfiction trilogy on the mythology of the American West (Regeneration Through Violence, 1973; The Fatal Environment, 1985; Gunfighter Nation, 1992) stood alone. He then added a fourth installment, “A Great Disorder,” in 2024. Overall, these books dismantle the hero myths that “American Primeval” criticizes with its blunt violence—even as the series indulges some of these myths. (For example, Kitsch’s Isaac Reed, raised by members of the Shoshone tribe, can be seen as a descendant of Natty Bumppo, the hero of James Fenimore Cooper’s 19th-century Leatherstocking Tales and an archetype of what Slotkin calls the “man, the…”knows Indians.”) While entertainment programs ranging from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show to classic Hollywood Westerns specialize in depicting the brutality of frontier existence To simplify and clean up, American “Primeval” aims to immerse you in the chaos and suffering.