Nobody expected the network behind the reality series “Gold Rush” and “Bering Sea Gold” to turn out a pretty good scripted miniseries on the Canadian Gold Rush.
But “Klondike” (Discovery, 9 p.m.), which begins its three-night run tonight, is a decent yarn, effectively shot, evocatively captured and acted with a cast led by Richard Madden, familiar as Robb Stark from “Game of Thrones.”
He and his buddy first head West in search of adventure, and then are steered to the Yukon country when they hear of its gold riches. There, they build the most convincing boom town since “Deadwood” with a few villians that are nearly as good, particularly Tim Roth as a ruthless local real estate schemer. Sam Shepard is part of the cast as well as a priest who wants to stay, and Abbie Cornish has just the kind of spirit required to survive in the frontier country.
Three two-hour nights seem a good way to sample the adventure, and its wintery setting is either fitting to the tumultuous weather or redundant.
Conditions for the miniseries were worse than most places experienced this harsh season, says Discovery’s executive producer.
“Fifty-six days, 9,000 feet above sea level, above the cloud cover, temperatures that dropped to almost 30 below zero for 16 hours straight, and raging rapids,” Dolores Gavin said in introducing the “Klondike” panel on the first day of the TV Critics Association winter press tour in Pasadena. ” For our cast and crew, that was a day on the job.”
Madden, for his part, appreciated the compact nature of the project. ” This was a really intense short space of time, and I think that really lent itself to being able to be get completely immersed in this world,” he said. “We had to, a lot of the time, push ourselves in these extreme situations, in these extreme locations, and right up against it time wise. But something about that really gave it a momentum and pushed us all to make the most of the time we had.”
Roth had fun with his villainous role. “I like the idea of playing a real estate sort of a crooked real estate guy,” he said. “I found him to be incredibly offensive but also quite funny. And the humor aspect, even if it’s only for my own entertainment, I find that’s what keeps me going.”
Sam Shepard got the call to play his role at the last miute. “Sam came in to replace Chris Cooper, who had suffered a minor heart attack, who had originally been cast in the role,” producer Paul Scheuring says. “H e’d come in pretty late into the process. And he was a very willing collaborator, and he had his thoughts, certainly, about some scenes and contributed.”
For his part Shepard, was the one of the most taciturn personalities at press tour, refusing to talk to reporters at the big expensive “Klondike” themed party that night, or say much at the press conference.
He did say, however, that the gold rush period as “another piece of American madness.
“It’s just another chunk of the insanity that we carry around with us regardless of whether we’re involved in technology or if we’re involved in trapping beavers.”
“Klondike” runs nightly through Wednesday at 9 p.m. on Discovery