What city is Landman based on? The show names it outright — the cameras were 300 miles away

Landman doesn't bury its setting under an invented county name the way most oil dramas do. It says Midland, and then films about 300 miles east of it.

The series is set in Midland, Texas, and neighboring Odessa — the twin cities at the center of the Permian Basin, the oilfield that made West Texas the most productive petroleum region in the country. Billy Bob Thornton's Tommy Norris works for M-Tex Oil, a fictional company headquartered in Midland. The setting is not incidental to the premise; it is the premise. The show came out of Boomtown, the Texas Monthly podcast hosted by Christian Wallace, who co-created the series with Taylor Sheridan and reported the original series in the Permian. Texas Monthly is credited as an executive producer.

Where the cameras were

Fort Worth. The production office sits there, and the overwhelming majority of both seasons was shot inside the city limits or in small towns within an hour of it. The drive from the Fort Worth production base to the real Midland is roughly five hours on I-20.

• M-Tex Oil headquarters — Frost Tower, downtown Fort Worth.
• Midland Hospital — a building on Chisholm Trail in Jacksboro, about 70 miles northwest.
• The nursing home — Western Skies in Weatherford, with a separate field-trip sequence shot at Rick's Cabaret on Calmont Avenue.
• The deposition — the actual headquarters of the American Association of Professional Landmen on Fournier Street, the real trade body for Tommy's real job.
• The country club scenes — River Crest Country Club and The Resort Golf Club.
• The track meet — TCU's Lowdon Track Complex.
• Private jets — Meacham Airport and Perot Field.

Season 2 widened the map without leaving town: the Stockyards National Historic District, the White Elephant Saloon, Cattlemen's Steak House, Will Rogers Memorial Center, Bowie House and SGS Studios in the Alliance Corridor. The oil derricks, pump jacks and wind turbines were shot around Cresson, Jacksboro and Weatherford — real petroleum infrastructure, just several hundred miles from the basin it's meant to represent.

Read more: Why are Landman seasons so short? The man who gave Yellowstone a 14-episode season keeps this one at ten

Why Fort Worth and not the Permian

Sheridan's operation is based in the area, the crew infrastructure and stages are there, and Fort Worth has the two things Midland can't supply on demand: a downtown that reads as oil money, and enough hotel rooms for a Paramount+ production.

"If I had to pick a city in the United States where I feel most comfortable, it's Fort Worth, Texas," Thornton said in a 2025 interview with Visit Fort Worth.

The Permian's actual working towns are also, practically speaking, booked. Housing in Midland and Odessa tracks the rig count, which is the subject of the show.

What that means on screen

Mostly nothing, because North Texas and West Texas share flat horizon, mesquite and pump jacks. What's missing is scale — the Permian's oilfield sprawl doesn't have a stand-in within an hour of Fort Worth, so the industry arrives in the show through dialogue, interiors and rig sets rather than through landscape.

The most authentic location in the entire production is a trade association office building, and it's playing itself.

For the record: season 1 ran ten episodes from 17 November 2024 to 12 January 2025 and finished 2024 as the third most-watched original streaming show worldwide, at 9.9 billion minutes viewed. Season 2 ran 16 November 2025 to 18 January 2026 and opened to 9.2 million global views in 48 hours, the biggest premiere in Paramount+ history. Season 3 was ordered in December 2025, with filming expected to start in May 2026 — in Fort Worth.

Earlier we wrote: Hell on Wheels: what happens to Mickey? Phil Burke says everyone expected him to die in season one