‘Longmire’ finds new life at Netflix

After three successful seasons, “Longmire” was put out to pasture by A&E last year. It was something of a shock. The show averaged 5.6 million viewers in 2014 and drew better numbers than, say, “Mad Men” or “Orphan Black.” On the other hand, the contemporary Western about a sheriff in Wyoming never seemed to generate much buzz.

That fact doesn’t matter to star Robert Taylor, who sounds a lot like no-nonsense lawman Walt Longmire, the character he plays on the show.

“Sometimes I look at these shows that everybody talks about doing so well, and then I slide across the page and look at our numbers, and we’re doing three times what they’re doing,” he says. “I feel comfortable being in that place and getting the job done. That’s kind of what the show’s like. It’s not demonstrative and it’s not big.

“I could care less if the hipsters in L.A. or New York are watching it, because you know plenty of people do, and they love the show. That’s good enough for me.”

It’s also good enough for Netflix, which picked the show up for a fourth season. The streaming service will unveil 10 new episodes on Thursday, Sept. 10.

“Doesn’t everybody want to be on Netflix?” Taylor says. “There’s no more ‘I have to be at home at 8:30 on Tuesday for my show.’ Now you can make TV suit your time and priorities.”

Despite the program’s new home, do not expect a Walt nude scene or a sudden explosion of F bombs.

“It’s exactly the same,” Taylor says with a chuckle. “I think I’ve said ‘B.S.’ once. That’s about as emotional as I’ve gotten in four seasons.”

If anything, he says, fans will enjoy the program more now, because there’s literally more to each episode. On A&E, an episode was usually 42 minutes, with 18 minutes reserved for commercials. An average “Longmire” on Netflix will be an hour.

“We’re making the show we always wanted to make,” Taylor says. “All that beautiful, languid stuff with the scenery and the characters will be there. Before we had all this great stuff we had to cut to meet the time constraints, but not anymore.”

Based on a successful series of mystery novels by Craig Johnson, the “Longmire” world has become something of a phenomenon, albeit one that flies under the mainstream radar. For the past four years, Longmire Days has brought together the show’s cast and creators with an increasingly large army of devoted fans in Buffalo, Wyo.

“It’s delightfully madcap and the greatest way to spend time that you can imagine,” Taylor says. “It’s three days of complete mayhem with 10,000 people showing up and you can’t get a hotel room for hundreds of miles around. The whole town becomes a big party.”

Those fans are the ones Taylor credits with getting the show on Netflix.

“We have very loyal viewers who fought really hard to get the show back on the air,” he says. “Everybody working on this season, me included, kind of thinks this is our best season by far. It wouldn’t have happened without them.”

Reach the reporter at randy.cordova@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8849. Twitter.com/randy_cordova.

‘Longmire’

Netflix will release the show’s fourth season on Thursday, Sept. 10.