Old friends Danny Masterson and Ashton Kutcher return to TV in new Netflix series
Netflix will debut its new original show on Friday called “The Ranch,” which tells the story of a family living together on a ranch in the fictional town of Garrison, Colorado.
According to Mashable, Ashton Kutcher and Danny Masterson had been trying to work on something together for a while now.
"Literally for 10 years we’ve been trying to find something we could work on together," Kutcher told Mashable at Netflix's Television Critics Association presentation in January.
In this show, Kutcher plays Colt Bennett, a semipro football player who returns home after his dreams of going pro never came to fruition. On the ranch are his stern father, Beau, played by Sam Elliott, and his trouble-making brother, Jameson, also known as Rooster, played by Masterson. The show will also star Debra Winger as Maggie, the local bar owner, estranged wife of Beau and mother of Rooster and Colt.
Kutcher and Masterson worked together on the set of “That ‘70s Show,” which ended in 2006. Kutcher played Michael Kelso, a pretty boy who lacked any intelligence, and Masterson played the anti-establishment supporter, Steven Hyde.
The two became close friends during the show.
“The hope is to take this genre and reinvent it and repackage it for a new generation on a new distribution network,” Kutcher said.
The show will differ from Netflix’s usual way of releasing an original series. Instead of posting all the episodes at once, Netflix will post this 20-episode series in two, 10-episode batches at different times of the year. The show will have no language restrictions, which means characters can swear as much as they want without fear of censoring.
“We only took it one place,” Kutcher said. “Netflix has been an incredible partner in letting up try and do new things.”
With both Kutcher and Masterson working on another sitcom together, fans of “That ‘70s Show” can feel nostalgic as both actors bring the same energy to their characters as they did when they were younger.