Yellowstone Star Kelly Reilly's Medical Show Is Nearly Impossible To Watch

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

Beth Dutton became a fan-favorite character on "Yellowstone" and a big part of that is down to actress Kelly Reilly, who somehow managed to strike a delicate balance between the character's strong independence and her often shocking amorality. According to Reilly, it's the character flaws that really endeared fans to Beth, with audiences quickly becoming simultaneously appalled and enraptured by the character's willingness to embrace her failings and maintain her strong will even at the expense of those around her, including loved ones. Whatever the reason, Beth became a popular enough character for Paramount to give her and Cole Hauser's Rip Wheeler their own spin-off, which will follow the married couple after the tumultuous (and controversial) events of the fifth and final season of "Yellowstone."

For Reilly, Beth has been somewhat of a breakout role. Though the British actress has been working since the mid-90s, no role has ever had the impact of her "Yellowstone" character, despite the fact she's been a series lead before. Take "Black Box," for example. This short-lived medical drama aired on ABC back in 2014 and starred Reilly as Catherine Black, a renowned neurologist who is keeping her bipolar disorder a secret from everyone. That is, everyone except her therapist Dr. Helen Hartramph (Vanessa Redgrave), who has been a mentor to Black ever since she had her first mental break. Dr. Black, who's engaged to David Ajala's Will Van Rensselaer, is also keeping several other secrets but finds distraction from her fraught personal life in her work at the state-of-the-art medical center known as The Cube. Here, she deals with patients with rare and unusual conditions, which provided the "House"-like medical mystery aspect of the show (producer Bryan Singer also executive produced the Hugh Laurie-led "House").

Things started off well for the show, which earned a straight-to-series order before debuting on ABC in April 2014. By August of that year, however, "Black Box" had been canceled — and has pretty much disappeared, becoming impossible to watch today.

"Black Box" wrapped its first season in July 2014 and the following month, ABC announced they were not renewing it for a second season. According to a report from TV by the Numbers, "Black Box" had debuted with okay ratings which then "rapidly declined," prompting ABC to shift the series to the Thursday at 8 p.m. "dead zone." After that, its fate was sealed.

The series was created by Amy Holden Jones, who had much better luck with her other medical drama "The Resident," which aired on Fox for six seasons. "Black Box" however, was doomed to live in infamy as a show that was cancelled after just one season — and when I say "live in infamy" I mean "be immediately forgotten" as this under-seen medical drama has since vanished from, well, pretty much everywhere.

At the time of writing, the only way to watch "Black Box" is via a German Blu-ray and DVD release. For whatever reason Deutschland got full physical media for the one and only season of this forgotten show, which otherwise isn't available on any streamer. So if you really have to see the entire season, you'll have to hand over 17 Euros for "Die komplette 1." German viewers also had access to the show via the country's Prime Video but at this point it looks as if the rights have long since expired. Why might "Black Box" have been wiped from the TV history books? Well, besides the ratings being terrible, nobody actually liked it.

Critics announced "Black Box" dead on arrival. The show earned a lowly 26% score on Rotten Tomatoes, which shouldn't necessarily be the final arbiter of its overall quality (this is the site that determined there are only two perfect sci-fi movies, after all). But the reviews collected on RT really are terrible. Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times was perhaps the most scathing in her review, describing "Black Box" as "a show so deeply flawed and absurdly derivative you will wonder if you, like the main character, are experiencing a manic episode." Unless, that is, you think the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Gail Pennington was harsher when she wrote, "This is, hands down, the worst series of the year, with the most annoying lead character in a season with many annoying lead characters." Oh, then there was Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter, who described the series as "instantly annoying" and seemed slightly impressed to note that it "sets some kind of record (certainly a personal one) for almost instant agitation."

On the other hand, Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal was more complimentary, writing that "despite some madly improbable adventures in the hospital's brain-surgery unit, creator Amy Holden Jones and team have delivered a Black Box whose content is both smart and seductive." Reviews such as this were, lamentably, few and far between, which surely played into ABC's decision not to recover this particular "Black Box" for a second season, or allow anyone to ever discover its contents ever again. Not that Kelly Reilly minds now that Beth Dutton and "Yellowstone" have become so overwhelmingly popular.