TV Review: ‘Klondike’
Conor Leslie as seductive prostitute Sabine (charged with supplying some basic-cable-friendly brief nudity)
'Klondike' Producers Talk Going for Gold at Discovery
How did you find the book?Zucker: Ridley Scott has had an historic interest in Jack London and he started shipping Jack London books down to us and saying, "We have to venture into this period and this fascinating character."
What kind of liberties did you take with Bill and Belinda's stories?
Scheuring: I thought Charlotte's book was engaging, but then I started kind of reducing it to its essence and character motivations. Belinda was an island, as far as I know historically in terms of what I've read through Charlotte's book. In drama, a character has to have relations to add to the character. We needed to add some conflict in her life, so I created a conflict with real estate. The biggest liberty is the relationship between Bill and Belinda. You can't have everybody up there crawling around in the mud and not kissing each other at some point (laughs). Bill's only motivation was to go up there and get rich, and that was the overriding theme of the six-episode series. Personally, I'm not particularly interested in seeing if someone gets rich or not. There is some of this in Charlotte's book, but there was also the idea of that young man's might, which was to go forth into the world and have the adventure.
You also added the Epstein character, who wasn't in the book.
Scheuring: Another example of taking liberties to serve a larger thematic intent was the character of Sabine. It's a high-budget TV show and there's our handsome lead going up into the adventure and lo and behold, the beautiful girl shows up. I wanted that to be almost groan-worthy, where the audience is like, "Of course there's a chick that hot in the Klondike; I'm not sure I like this show." But then we flipped that on its head to illustrate that not all appearances are as they seem.
Was there anything Discovery said you couldn't do? There's no profanity in Klondike.
Zucker: They actually encouraged us to push that boundary as far as we were comfortable.
Scheuring: I didn't think we were going to get the naked butt shot, but they told us to go for it (laughs).
Zucker: They probably would have let us go even further if we were inclined to.
Scheuring: We were taking some risks in terms of the general TV conceit: We wanted to have multiple narrators. At first they chafed at that. They thought we were going to confuse the audience. I always argue that the audience is so incredibly sophisticated; they are so much more steeped in narrative than any of us were growing up. They're ahead of us.
Zucker: That was a debate from script to final delivery. That probably was the most protracted discussion. Originally, there were actually more narrators than we had now. There was some restructuring that went on in the second night where we even considered bringing Belinda in as one. It was a very interesting conceit -- not just to use it as a device but allowing for that kind of shifting perspective to inform the story, but to also give you that deeper insight in the character. It was something you were intent on from the start. And again, to Discovery's credit, they really gave us the latitude to find our way with it.
Klondike Mini-Series on Discovery
Plenty of blood, foul language, perilous situations, nudity, sexual situations, and subject matter make this not suitable for young viewers. Otherwise, it is a mini-series that will have some interest to those who wonder what life was like in the middle of nowhere, in a time when people would kill for a little gold, where there were basically no laws, and where humanity was on the brink of falling over the proverbial cliff. Through it all, however, some kindness prevailed and glimpses of true compassion emerged.SPOILER ALERT! Join Chris Jacob's for behind-the-scenes looks and cast interviews. | KLONDIKE continues Tuesday 9/8c on Discovery!
* I'm pretty confident there will be more of 'Sabine' in the DVD release (with slim chance of uncensored Euro broadcast). The mini-series is produced by Scott Free Productions responsible for Katie McGrath tit-show in another mini-series Labyrinth.
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