I ve Never Been Tied to a Chair: Oil Workers Mystified by New TV Show – WSJ

In the first episode of Landman, protagonist Tommy Norris makes his first appearance tied up to a chair, a burlap sack over his head as he negotiates an oil deal with members of a drug cartel. 

That s when Chris Yonker s mother-in-law, who was watching the show with him in Houston, chimed in. Is this something that ever happens to you? she asked Yonker, a 47-year-old landman based in San Antonio.

Since Landman started streaming on Paramount+, landmen who help oil and gas producers secure drilling rights have been inundated with calls and texts from friends and family suddenly eager to learn all about their job. 

In the show, the chain-smoking Norris, played by Billy Bob Thornton, clocks oil patch thugs, puts out literal fires, and spars with lawyers, police officers and his glamorous ex-wife. Early on the foul-mouthed Norris races to the site of a well explosion that killed three men. This is the patch, he tells his boss at one point. An airplane full of drugs being run over by an oil tanker ain t news, it s just another Monday.

via www.wsj.com

Seems like a pretty good show, though, if you watch TV.