Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.5
Overall		3.5

Klondike Blu-ray Movie Review

Eureka!

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 14, 2014

Long before he was secret agent Derek Flint, The President’s Analyst or Affliction’s Glen Whitehouse, James Coburn played a lovable scoundrel in a little remembered 1960-61 television series called Klondike. There are certainly scoundrels aplenty in another television outing named Klondike, both lovable and not so lovable, in this first scripted miniseries from the auspices of Discovery Channel. Unlike the resolutely studio bound early sixties’ iteration of a story built around gold hunters in the Yukon, this Klondike benefits from some truly astounding location photography (with Canada filling in for the Alaskan wilderness), but the series turns out to be a somewhat derivative novelistic aggregation of colorful characters that owes quite a bit to efforts like Deadwood: The Complete Series and Hell On Wheels. There’s an oft-repeated anecdote that is told in history classes in my home state of Oregon that the Oregon Trail once ended with a sign that had the printed directional pointer labeled “Portland” showing the way north, while two nuggets of gold were affixed to a simple arrow pointing south toward San Francisco. This may be a somewhat self-serving tale meant to indicate that only those who could read (and who were therefore assumed to be more cultured and perhaps even more intelligent) ended up in the Pacific Northwest, while the great unwashed money grubbing masses matriculated to sunnier climes down south. Klondike actually offers a rather interesting cross section of types who have gotten even further north than Oregon in the search for untold riches, but the series initially focuses on two college graduates (or near graduates, anyway) named Bill Haskell (Richard Madden) and Byron Epstein (Augustus Prew) who pool together their monies in a perhaps mad quest to really strike it rich circa 1897 in the wilds of Alaska. Much like Deadwood or Hell on Wheels, there’s some actual history wafting through the series, including occasional “real life” characters wandering into various subplots, but Klondike also attempts to contemporize its story with some anachronistic dialogue that is decidedly 21st century at times. Despite occasional missteps like that, the miniseries manages to work up some considerable dramatic heft as it goes along, and it’s notable that one of the two initial focal characters has a rather ignominious end early on in the story, a plot development which provides some impetus for further machinations in subsequent episodes.

Klondike wastes absolutely no time in staking its claim to a certain epic visual sweep, as the first scene in the miniseries shows the horrifying effects of a calamitous avalanche. While the sequence ends up playing like a pre-credits tease (especially since it’s more or less repeated verbatim a few minutes later within the actual context of the narrative), it also alerts the viewer to the fact that this is going to be a gritty adventure story that attempts to realistically create the rugged conditions gold hunters faced. When the impossibly ferocious snow envelops a chain of prospective prospectors forging their way up the Chilkoot Pass, Bill, seemingly half frozen (and perhaps even half dead) begins to recount what got him to such a sorry state.

Bill’s reminiscence quickly gets the pair from Boston to the West, where they encounter a prospector just back from Dawson City with a can full of gold nuggets. On the spur of the moment, the two decide that a northern expedition is just the adventure they’ve been craving. While Bill seems to be a bit reserved and cautious, Ep (as he’s called) wants to throw caution to the wind, something that isn’t all that surprising since it’s already been shown that he’s an inveterate gambler.

The series rather quickly parses some daunting geography to get the pair up into the wild, where they begin encountering other folks with the same wanderlust. Some of these, like a sharpshooting minister named Father Judge (Sam Shepard) who improbably saves Bill from a pack of hungry wolves, seem like noble if slightly misguided types. Others, like a sneaky con man named Soapy Smith (Ian Hart), offer little bon mots to the pair like “Up here, you’re either getting’ or you’re getting’ got”, a not especially hopeful proscription, especially since Smith himself has just attempted to bilk the two. Much of the drama of at least the first episode of Klondike rests with Bill and Ep's struggle to navigate the waters (both figuratively and literally in one hair raising sequence in some river rapids) of their new environment.

Without completely spoiling what turns out to be a rather unexpected turn of events, one of the focal pair doesn’t last too much longer, leaving the survivor to try to ferret out what led to the death while also continuing to try to make a fortune in the Alaskan wild. Much as with both Deadwood and Hell on Wheels, there’s a nonstop array of eccentric supporting characters on hand, including an enigmatic guy named The Count (Tim Roth), who has the airs of a nobleman but whose vicious demeanor perhaps betrays his real roots. Belinda Mulrooney (Abbie Cornish) initially seems to be little more than window dressing for the surviving prospector’s romantic interest, but Klondike again wisely stays away from preconceptions to make her a fascinating combination of risk taker and pragmatist.

The series has a truly majestic visual sense, even when Dawson is depicted as a rain and snow soaked hamlet surrounded by untold miles of rugged wilderness. Some of the arcs that are shoehorned into the miniseries end up not paying any significant dividends, but overall Klondike offers both an epic sweep and nicely intimate storytelling that brings the incredible hardships, triumphs and tragedies of a hearty bunch of pioneers quite viscerally to life.

Klondike Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Klondike is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Cinedigm and Discovery with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. If you're a fan of either Deadwood or (especially) Hell on Wheels, you'll have a good idea of the look of this series, which offers excellently crisp detail courtesy of its native HD source material, but which has been rather seriously desaturated a lot of the time so that much of the series almost resembles a living Daguerreotype. The lack of vivid, popping color in at least large swaths of the series actually works toward the show's overall benefit, as when a sudden pop of hue like a "working woman"'s Henna purple hair or Bill and Ep's first view of a grass filled valley (after having trekked over snowcapped mountain passes) really springs nicely to life. Some of the establishing and aerial shots of the frozen wilderness are impressively stable with exceptional depth of field. Contrast is generally excellent here, though the series tends to opt for natural lighting, a choice which makes some of the nighttime, lantern or flame lit sequences appear slightly murky at times. That propensity is also evident in some of the more aggressively color graded sequences, where a slathering of cool blue tones (to give the most prevalent example) tends to deprive the image of some of its clarity and fine detail.

Note: Though our specs above don't allow for this distinction, the first disc is a BD-50 and the second a BD-25.

Klondike Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Klondike's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 has some great uses of both general immersion and some nice, rumbly LFE, immediately evident in the series' opening scenes featuring the devastating avalanche. Other standouts include the raging rapids sequence in the first episode, and several sequences that take place in Dawson's bustling "downtown" environment. Dialogue and the show's enjoyable score are presented cleanly and clearly with excellent fidelity and quite wide dynamic range.

Klondike Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Klondike Behind the Scenes (1080p; 21:16) is a promotional featurette made for Discovery to hype the show. Truth be told, there's really not that much actual behind the scenes footage here, and instead this tends to ping pong between interviews and clips from the finished miniseries.


• Discovering Klondike (1080p; 10:36) repeats some of the very same clips from the first piece, while presenting more interviews that focus on the show's genesis and production. Ironically, this featurette does have a second or two showing scenes being shot.


• Cast Interviews (1080p; 11:14) features Richard Madden, Sam Shepard, Abbie Cornish, Tim Roth and Executive Producer Ridley Scott in separate segments.

Klondike Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Discovery is off to a great start in scripted television with Klondike. While this generally compelling miniseries makes a few missteps along the way with a few too many tangential subplots for its own good, the general throughline of a young man attempting to find himself, not to mention his partner's killer, makes for an exciting, semi-fact filled journey. The miniseries is elevated by superb production design and some very nicely nuanced, lived in performances by the large and colorful cast. Technical merits here are very strong, though the "look" of the series is often intentionally drab and dour. Recommended.