The series takes place in a county in rural Wyoming. The author lives in the Northwest part of the state, not too far from Sheridan, just south of where Custer made a colossal error in judgement and just north of Yellowstone. I picture the books as being set in a similar topography and the show clearly has that nailed down well.
The strengths of the series are that the characters are all well cast and strongly acted. Longmire himself (played by Robert Taylor) is a bit leaner than you would guess from the book (where he describes himself as having trimmed down from 260 lb. to 245), but just as taciturn and easily irritated as the character he is depicting. His under deputy, Vic Moretti (played by Katee Sackoff) is perfect--she is feisty, brave, quick to draw her gun, even quicker to use her feminine wiles to get the information that she is looking for. You definitely want her on your side in a fight, and you would be comfortable having her watch your back--that is true in the book and it comes through in the televised show. She is a great female cop character and Sackoff plays her perfectly. Longmire's long time friendship with a Cherokee who lives off the reservation is with Henry Standing Bear (who is played by Lou Diamond Phillips) and is a source of information about who lives on the reservation, what is happening there, and serves as the occasional liaison between the county and the tribal police. All of that helps to balance out what I think is the real weakness of the show, and that is that it is in too short of a format to do an excellent job with story and plot--the shows are between 40-50 minutes, when the ideal length for this sort of show would be exactly twice that. In order to get the whole story out in 40 minutes, you have to cut a lot of corners, and not go into too much depth of character. Hopefully they will do some 2-segment stories in the current season.
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