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.
While Klondike does play a bit like "Deadwood Lite" at times, it's best to avoid comparisons with the late great HBO drama and take the miniseries on its own terms as sturdy epic storytelling populated by a memorable collection of characters.
Klondike delivers its dramatic bounty more effectively and compactly, capitalizing on some of Discovery's favorite obsessions: dangerous vocations, gold prospecting and harsh Alaska-adjacent terrain, in a fictionalized account of the 1897 gold rush.
If you're just asking for an entertaining adventure story with impressive visuals and a solid cast, it does the job, and represents a promising first foray into scripted drama for Discovery.
Klondike was wrapped in a picturesque grandeur, but inside there wasn't a nugget of gold to be found, just a few sparkly platitudes and the message that hope is far too simplistic of a notion to hang an entire miniseries on.
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.
Yet in a miniseries full of wonders-among them all those lead actors from the U.K. or the former British Empire-Discovery has now staked its own claim.
It takes some time to get used to writer Paul Scheuring's period-specific dialogue, but once you stop chuckling and just go with it, you'll be fine. It only adds to the authenticity of the production.
That everyone is concerned with one particular killing when murder appears to be common doesn't make much sense, and the dialogue sometimes sounds too 21st century, but the exploration of what greed and deprivation do to people holds your attention.
