Klondike: The New Deadwood

The Discovery Channel has a lot riding on its new six-part series Klondike starting tomorrow (January 20th).  Produced in part by Ridley Scott and hosting a cast that includes Richard Madden (Game of Thrones), Tim Roth (Lie to Me, Pulp Fiction), and Sam Shepard (Black Hawk Down, Mud), the new series has a lot of things going for it from the start.  Discovery provides the basic premise:

Discovery’s first scripted mini-series, announced last year, is based on Charlotte Gray’s book Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike. Her tale brings to life the story of six strangers and their collective fight for survival and wealth in a small frontier town in the remote Klondike.

Klondike follows 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.

You can view a variety of trailer clips on the Discovery site and YouTube that should give you a good idea of what is the come.  And Discovery spares no inside story to create greater interest, particularly the difficulties faced by cast and crew to make this series possible.  Given that such shows are often set on sound stages, the efforts here are impressive.

So, is Dawson City the Canadian Deadwood?  Maybe it is, but that would be a terrific selling point since Deadwood was a great show that ended too early (and HBO should have known better).  So if another team wants to pick up the mining torch, so to say, then I say "Great!".  For there is gold in them hills, and the lazy will be left behind.  (I was going to say something about "Winter is coming," but it appears it is already in the Yukon.)