That's the Jimmy Stewart film (directed by Anthony Mann) in which Stewart heads for Dawson City, his boyfriend (Walter Brennan) and cattle in tow, to escape a number of people (most notably John McIntire) who want his hide. (Get it? His hide?) Consciously or not, "Klondike" borrows heavily from it.
For a program supposedly based on fact, "Klondike" displays two obvious errors right at the start. For one thing, the Canadian authorities required prospectors climbing the Chilkoot to bring at least a year's supply of food, so they wouldn't have to bother burying people who died from starvation. This is glossed over to the point of being ignored.
The second error occurs when Bill Haskell (a real Yukon prospector who wrote a book about his experiences, played by Richard Madden) falls into a near-freezing river. (Madden insisted on doing the stunt himself.) He makes it to shore, but even without a fire, his clothing somehow manages to dry out. Why he doesn't succumb to hypothermia (a huge amount of body heat would be needed to evaporate the water in his clothes) isn't explained. Nor is the sudden appearance of Father William Judge (Sam Shepard), who shoots a wolf about to make a meal of Haskell. (Three errors, actually -- non-rabid wolves rarely attack humans.)
The story is less documentary than drama, perhaps excessively so. There are lots of characters with conflicting desires (the very basis of drama), but it seems mechanical and schematic. Belinda Mulrooney (Abie Cornish) finds Haskell attractive (apparently for an innocence she doesn't want destroyed) and helps him, simply because it moves the plot along.
As for the reviewer who complained about "social engineering"... If racism and anti-Semitism were part of that era, there's no reason not to include them (where appropriate). What bothers me -- as a liberal -- is the projection of liberal values on people who did not have them.
I haven't read Charlotte Gray's book (from which "Klondike" is derived), but I suspect the writers tarted it up with as many dramatic clichés as possible -- the murder of one's best friend and the search for justice, the prostitute with a heart of gold, the priest who has to decide whether to keep silent when he knows who the killer is, etc, etc, etc. Sorry, but I've seen all this before. And the 60-year-old "The Far Country" includes homoeroticism (Brennan has a serious man-crush on Stewart), while "Klondike" ignores this. (Ditto for "Paint Your Wagon" -- Marvin and Eastwood love each other more than they love any woman.) We don't even see a bull dance!
The series slogs to a dragged-out, highly implausible anticlimax. Most of the people receive their just rewards (good and bad), or "recover their forgotten moral senses". But Meeker inadvertently finds the one weak spot on a frozen river and falls in, taking a lot of the gold with him. And Father Judge is given a funeral while he's alive, so he can enjoy it. The funeral music is supplied by white musicians inexplicably familiar with Dixieland jass. Are we supposed to take this seriously?
"Klondike" is well-acted and beautifully produced. The script is merely serviceable. It's larded with pretentious aphorisms and philosophical observations that seem more 20th-century than 19th. The writers show no awareness of when particular figures of speech came into use. ("I never thought the first day of the rest of my life would be so bad.") The low point of their ignorance comes when Bill tells the Mountie "You're incentivizing killers!". (!!!) Is it too much to expect a scriptwriter to own the OED, and use it? (I do, and I do.)
Frankly, "Deadwood" covered the same moral and psychological grounds, and did it with greater depth and imagination. Discovery Channel has labored mightily and brought forth a mouse.
For a program supposedly based on fact, "Klondike" displays two obvious errors right at the start. For one thing, the Canadian authorities required prospectors climbing the Chilkoot to bring at least a year's supply of food, so they wouldn't have to bother burying people who died from starvation. This is glossed over to the point of being ignored.
The second error occurs when Bill Haskell (a real Yukon prospector who wrote a book about his experiences, played by Richard Madden) falls into a near-freezing river. (Madden insisted on doing the stunt himself.) He makes it to shore, but even without a fire, his clothing somehow manages to dry out. Why he doesn't succumb to hypothermia (a huge amount of body heat would be needed to evaporate the water in his clothes) isn't explained. Nor is the sudden appearance of Father William Judge (Sam Shepard), who shoots a wolf about to make a meal of Haskell. (Three errors, actually -- non-rabid wolves rarely attack humans.)
The story is less documentary than drama, perhaps excessively so. There are lots of characters with conflicting desires (the very basis of drama), but it seems mechanical and schematic. Belinda Mulrooney (Abie Cornish) finds Haskell attractive (apparently for an innocence she doesn't want destroyed) and helps him, simply because it moves the plot along.
As for the reviewer who complained about "social engineering"... If racism and anti-Semitism were part of that era, there's no reason not to include them (where appropriate). What bothers me -- as a liberal -- is the projection of liberal values on people who did not have them.
I haven't read Charlotte Gray's book (from which "Klondike" is derived), but I suspect the writers tarted it up with as many dramatic clichés as possible -- the murder of one's best friend and the search for justice, the prostitute with a heart of gold, the priest who has to decide whether to keep silent when he knows who the killer is, etc, etc, etc. Sorry, but I've seen all this before. And the 60-year-old "The Far Country" includes homoeroticism (Brennan has a serious man-crush on Stewart), while "Klondike" ignores this. (Ditto for "Paint Your Wagon" -- Marvin and Eastwood love each other more than they love any woman.) We don't even see a bull dance!
The series slogs to a dragged-out, highly implausible anticlimax. Most of the people receive their just rewards (good and bad), or "recover their forgotten moral senses". But Meeker inadvertently finds the one weak spot on a frozen river and falls in, taking a lot of the gold with him. And Father Judge is given a funeral while he's alive, so he can enjoy it. The funeral music is supplied by white musicians inexplicably familiar with Dixieland jass. Are we supposed to take this seriously?
"Klondike" is well-acted and beautifully produced. The script is merely serviceable. It's larded with pretentious aphorisms and philosophical observations that seem more 20th-century than 19th. The writers show no awareness of when particular figures of speech came into use. ("I never thought the first day of the rest of my life would be so bad.") The low point of their ignorance comes when Bill tells the Mountie "You're incentivizing killers!". (!!!) Is it too much to expect a scriptwriter to own the OED, and use it? (I do, and I do.)
Frankly, "Deadwood" covered the same moral and psychological grounds, and did it with greater depth and imagination. Discovery Channel has labored mightily and brought forth a mouse.