Photos: Discovery Channel
You’ve seen it in Brokeback Mountain, The Borne Legacy and Legends of the Fall, and this week it will once again be the star attraction on your TV screen.
The rugged beauty of Alberta takes centre stage in the Discovery Channel’s first-ever scripted mini-series, Klondike, this week. The province beat Romania as the location of choice when it came to standing in for the wild Yukon frontier, and a set depicting a booming Dawson City was specially created just west of Calgary. Filming also took place at Springbank, Canmore and the Kananaskis.
Featuring an all-star cast, including Richard Madden (Game of Thrones, A Promise), Abbie Cornish (RoboCop, Limitless), Tim Roth (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs) and Sam Shepard (August: Osage County, Out Of The Furnace), Klondike tells the powerful story of the last great Gold Rush.
This epic six-hour, three-night television event kicks off on Discovery Channel on Monday, January 20 at 9pm ET/PT, followed by part two Tuesday, January 21 at 9pm ET/PT and part three Wednesday, January 22 at 9pm ET/PT.
Based on Charlotte Gray’s book, Gold Diggers: Striking It Rich in the Klondike, the three-part period drama brings to life the tale of seven strangers and their collective fight for survival and wealth in a small, frontier town in the remote Klondike.
The journey begins in 1897 when two childhood best friends, Bill (Madden) and Epstein (Augustus Prew) make the perilous journey through the North American wilderness to the Klondike boom town Dawson City, ‘The Paris of the North’, where neither law nor order prevailed.
In the untamed Yukon Territory during a period of outrageous lawlessness – murder, revenge, riches, violence and redemption awaited these two young, ambitious men who made the arduous, back-breaking journey to Dawson City.
Klondike is a man-versus-nature tale that places the characters in a land full of undiscovered wealth, but ravaged by harsh conditions, unpredictable weather and deceptive, dangerous individuals fueled by desperation – including greedy businessmen, seductive courtesans and native tribes witnessing the destruction of their people and land by opportunistic entrepreneurs.
And the rugged scenery of Alberta shines throughout.