Klondike: Yukon Mini-Series

Hello everybody! Today we have the Discovery Channel’s mini-series Klondike.

KLONDIKE

 

DIRECTOR: Simon Cellan Jones

STARRING:  Richard Madden, Abbie Cornish, Marton Coskas, Ian Hart, Greg Lawson, Conor Leslie, Tim Blake Nelson, Augustus Prew, Johnny Simmons, Tim Roth, Sam Shepard

GENRE: Historical Drama

NO. EPISODES: Six

YEAR: 2014

COUNTRY: United States

Plot Synopsis:

The lives of two childhood best friends, Bill and Epstein, in the late 1890s as they flock to the gold rush capital in the untamed Yukon Territory. This man-versus-nature tale places our heroes in a land full of undiscovered wealth, but ravaged by harsh conditions, unpredictable weather and desperate, dangerous characters including greedy businessmen,seductive courtesans and native tribes witnessing the destruction of their people and land by opportunistic entrepreneurs.

There isn’t much new in this northern Western, but the scenery is lovely, the acting is solid, and the mix of characters is just what you’d expect from the genre. Klondike grabs you with terrific performances and magnificently sweeping visuals of jagged mountains overlooking valleys of ice and snow. It helps that so much of ‘Klondike’ was shot on location and without CGI. That makes the series feel especially real and lived, which is key in making a project like this one work.

Given the cast, the drama-rich setting, and Ridley Scott’s involvement, I expected much more than I ended up receiving Its a paint by numbers miniseries with a bigger budget. Don’t get me wrong, it has its moments – with this cast, how could you not. Klondike has the worst dialogue ever, ranging from the ludicrous to the just plain inane. Also, why out of the thousands of faceless miners is our hero the focus of beautiful women, bad guys, the preacher and everybody else? Klondike gets sidetracked by the trite redemption stories of a hooker (Conor Leslie) and a Canadian Mountie (Marton Csokas). But those are small hiccups in this entertaining, expansive tale of one man’s fight to keep his humanity, which he discovers is more valuable than all the gold in the Yukon.

PROS:

• Richard Madden’s performance.
• Historical figures (Jack London)
• Enjoyable characters.

CONS:

• Should be a full series.
• Supporting characters performances.
• Pace is too slow.

SCORE: 7.5 / 10

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