Klondike

This enormously entertaining Discovery Channel mini-series boasts an impressive cast, including such iconic actors as Sam Shepard and Tom Roth, but it’s the performance of Abbie Cornish that steals the show. Acting against type – she’s usually cast for her good looks more than her talent in lackluster fiilms like Limitless and Sucker Punch – Cornish plays Belinda Mulrooney, a tough frontier woman out to make her fortune providing for the prospectors and other wealth seekers who have risked it all for a chance to become rich in the Alaskan wilderness. It’s a bold performance; the kind that makes everybody else on screen with her step up or get out of the way. Richard Madden, playing opposite of her as a young prospector/potential business partner/lover, is more than up for the challenge.