Oklahoma's most famous marshal: Paramount+ series 'Lawmen: Bass Reeves' premieres with David Oyelowo, Dennis Quaid

"Yellowstone" and "Tulsa King" mastermind Taylor Sheridan is turning his focus to one of the most iconic unsung heroes in Oklahoma history with his new Paramount+ series "Lawmen: Bass Reeves."

The eagerly awaited original series — starring executive producer and Emmy-nominated star David Oyelowo, Honorary Oscar recipient Donald Sutherland and Emmy nominee Dennis Quaid — premieres exclusively on the streaming service with two episodes on Sunday, Nov. 5 in the U.S. and all Paramount+ international markets.

"Revealing the untold story of the most legendary lawman in the Old West," "Lawmen: Bass Reeves" will follow Reeves' (Oyelowo) journey from enslavement to law enforcement as one of the first Black U.S. Marshals west of the Mississippi River.

"Despite arresting over 3,000 outlaws during the course of his career, the weight of the badge was heavy, and he wrestled with its moral and spiritual cost to his beloved family," according to the show's logline.

Paramount+ revealed in August a new title for the show with "Lawmen: Bass Reeves," which will now be a standalone anthology series. That means the first season will focus on the impressive but often overshadowed exploits of Reeves, while there will be "future iterations that will follow other iconic lawmen and outlaws who have impacted history," according to a news release.

Here's what else we know so far about "Lawmen: Bass Reeves":

Who was Bass Reeves and how does he fit into Oklahoma history?

Born enslaved in Arkansas in 1838, Bass Reeves grew up in Texas, where he was owned by Col. George R. Reeves, who served with the Confederate army during the Civil War. During the war, Bass Reeves escaped into Indian Territory, and he learned to communicate with the Cherokee, Creek and Seminole nations.

“He was probably the greatest gunfighter in the Wild West,” author and historian Art Burton told The Oklahoman's Steve Lackmeyer. “His folks said when he was a little kid, he would carry water in the cotton fields of Texas and he would sing songs of knives and guns and gunfighters. They were worried he would grow to become an outlaw because he sang about them so much.”

After his escape, Reeves served in the Union Army for the rest of the Civil War, then settled on a farm in Van Buren, Arkansas. In 1875, the legendary "Hanging Judge" Isaac C. Parker, who had taken over the Fort Smith marshal’s office, commissioned Reeves as a deputy U.S. marshal.

Reeves spent 32 years as a deputy marshal in Indian Territory. He was the only deputy to begin with Parker's court and work until Oklahoma statehood in 1907, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Upon Reeves' death on Jan. 12, 1910, the Muskogee Phoenix wrote, "In the history of the early days of Eastern Oklahoma the name of Bass Reeves has a place in the front rank among those who cleansed out the old Indian Territory of outlaws and desperadoes."

Who is starring in 'Lawmen: Bass Reeves?'

Along with the British-born Oyelowo, "Lawmen: Bass Reeves" will star Lauren E. Banks ("City on a Hill"), Demi Singleton ("King Richard"), Forrest Goodluck ("The Revenant"), Barry Pepper (2010's "True Grit," "Saving Private Ryan"), Emmy Award nominee Dennis Quaid (the Oklahoma-made movies "I Can Only Imagine" and "Reagan") and Honorary Oscar recipient Donald Sutherland ("The Dirty Dozen," "The Hunger Games" films).

In an exclusive August feature, Vanity Fair reported that Sutherland portrays the notorious Judge Parker, while Quaid plays fellow Deputy U.S. Marshal Sherrill Lynn, "a fictionalized amalgam of other real-life lawmen who worked with Reeves." Pepper plays Esau Pierce, a former Confederate soldier who becomes Reeves' nemesis. Goodluck co-stars as Billy Crow, a young Cherokee man who ends up joining Reeves' posse.

Banks portrays Reeves' wife, Jennie, while Singleton plays his daughter, Sally.

The cast also includes Shea Whigham ("Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1," the Oklahoma-made movie "Fancy Dance") and Garrett Hedlund ("Tulsa King," "Tron: Legacy") as guest stars. Whigham portrays Col. George Reeves, who owned Reeves when he was enslaved.

Joaquina Kalukango ("One Night in Miami"), Lonnie Chavis ("This Is Us"), Grantham Coleman ("The Americans"), Tosin Morohunfola ("Run the World"), Dale Dickey ("Hell or High Water"), Rob Morgan ("Mudbound"), Ryan O’Nan (the TV series "Fargo"), Margot Bingham ("Boardwalk Empire"), Mo Brings Plenty ("Yellowstone"), Justin Hurtt-Dunkley ("Mare of Easttown") and Bill Dawes ("City on a Hill") have recurring roles.

Who is working with Taylor Sheridan to make 'Lawmen: Bass Reeves?'

Sheridan is executive producing "Lawmen: Bass Reeves," which was created for television by executive producer and showrunner Chad Feehan.

In addition to Sheridan, Feehan and Oyelowo, the series is executive produced by Oyelowo's wife, Jessica Oyelowo, along with David C. Glasser, David Permut, Christina Alexandra Voros, Ron Burkle, Bob Yari and David Hutkin.

The eight-episode season is produced by MTV Entertainment Studios, 101 Studios, Sheridan’s Bosque Ranch Productions and Oyelowo’s Yoruba Saxon exclusively for Paramount+.

The historical drama is the latest addition to Sheridan’s growing slate of series on Paramount+, which includes "Tulsa King" "1923," "1883," "Mayor of Kingstown" and "Special Ops: Lioness" as well as the upcoming series "Land Man." The first season of "Tulsa King" filmed in Oklahoma, but as previously reported, the second season is not expected to film in the Sooner State.

Although it is set in what is now Oklahoma, "Lawmen: Bass Reeves" was filmed primarily in Sheridan's native Texas, which is his home base.

In spring 2022, Paramount+ dubbed the upcoming show an "epic limited series" titled "1883: The Bass Reeves Story," putting it under the umbrella of Sheridan's popular show "1883," which is a prequel to the prolific producer's smash "Yellowstone."

In August, though, the streaming service revealed the show's new name, "Lawmen: Bass Reeves," and its status change to an anthology series.

Sheridan has said that the Bass Reeves series is "a parallel world" to "1883" as they both take place in the 1880s in the Western United States. Since any series based on Reeves' life and legacy would be considered fact-based, while the "Yellowstone" saga is a work of fiction, it probably makes more sense for the legendary lawman's story to exist in its own television universe.

Why is the Bass Reeves series culturally significant?

Reeves was one of the first — but probably not the first — Black deputy marshals west of the Mississippi River. Although historian Martin Grams has debunked the theory, many still believe that Reeves was the inspiration for the Lone Ranger.

Count the star of "Lawmen: Bass Reeves" among them.

"This is the guy the Lone Ranger was based on, who got whitewashed out of history, and I just can't wait to get on that horse and tell this story," Oyelowo said in a 2022 Paramount+ video announcing plans for the series.

Voros, who directed the first episode of "Lawmen: Bass Reeves," plus four others installments of the eight-episode season, told Vanity Fair that she had also heard of Reeves' alleged connection to the Lone Ranger.

“I think the main reasons that’s attributed to him is he was such a remarkable shot, and that his posse man very often was Native American. It’s hard to know. So much is legend. I think Chad (Feehan, the series' creator), knowing that there’s so much unknown, was able to find a balance between things that are true and things that are said to be true and things we would like to be true," Voros told Vanity Fair.

It's true that many of Reeves' reported exploits seem made for TV. Notorious outlaw Belle Star even surrendered after learning that he had a warrant for her arrest.

Standing an imposing 6 feet, 2 inches tall, Reeves achieved celebrity status for his work in Indian Territory. But even as Western films and later TV series enjoyed runaway popularity into the 1950s, Reeves' story was largely forgotten. Meanwhile, fellow real-life lawmen like Wyatt Earp, Doc Holiday and Wild Bill Hickok have been frequently depicted on the large and small screens.

Oyelowo told Vanity Fair that getting the upcoming Bass Reeves series made was "quite a circuitous journey."

“I can’t tell you how many times in shooting the show I just found myself walking into either a daydream I had, either as a kid playing cowboys when I was younger, or even as an actor in the eight years I’ve been trying to get this thing made,” he told Vanity Fair in an interview that was conducted before the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.

Why is the time finally right for a Bass Reeves series?

Reeves has occasionally made his way to movie or TV screens, but not in a high-profile project like "Lawmen: Bass Reeves." The independent film "Hell on the Border," starring David Gyasi ("Maleficent: Mistress of Evil"), Ron Perlman ("Hellboy") and Frank Grillo ("Captain America: Winter Soldier"), was released in 2019. That's the same year that an actor playing Reeves (Jamal Akakpo) appeared briefly onscreen in the harrowing opening moments of the acclaimed HBO series "Watchmen," which recreated the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Plus, Delroy Lindo played Reeves in the 2021 Netflix Western "The Harder they Fall," Colman Domingo portrayed the legendary lawman in a 2017 episode of the NBC time-travel show "Timeless," and Jaleel White parodied the Western hero in 2015 on Comedy Central's "Drunk History."

Folks hoping to see big projects focused on Reeves have often been tantalized by exciting prospects that haven't been realized. In 2018, Deadline reported that Amazon Studios would be behind an untitled Reeves' biopic from then-up-and-coming director Chloé Zhao. She went on to win two Oscars for "Nomadland" and helm Marvel's "The Eternals" but hasn't made a movie about the Western hero.

In 2019, Revelations Entertainment, the independent movie production company founded and run by Morgan Freeman and Lori McCreary, announced it had re-optioned Burton’s book "Black, Red & Deadly," along with the author’s "Black Gun, Silver Star," for a TV series to be developed about Reeves. But Freeman has been trying to get a project about the marshal made since the 1990s, when the Oscar winner was attached to play Reeves.

In his Vanity Fair interview, Oyelowo credited Sheridan's passion for and success in Western storytelling with finally bringing Reeves' story to mainstream audiences.

“Taylor came along and indisputably reimagined and reinvigorated the Western,” Oyelowo told Vanity Fair. “I talked to him, and he is a real historian around this stuff. At that point, I’d been reading up on Bass Reeves for quite a while— and (Sheridan) was the only person I’d spoken to who knew at least as much, if not more, as I did. His passion for it just started making it feel like this might be a great collaboration. And then soon afterwards, Paramount+ expressed interest and we were off to the races.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Paramount + series 'Lawmen: Bass Reeves' about Oklahoma Old West hero with Dennis Quaid, David Oyelowo