Friday Night Lights producer Peter Berg reteams with Friday Night Lights star Taylor Kitsch for this stark meditation on brutality and humanity in the Old West

In 1800s America, life was simply a matter of survival, and this six-episode limited series explores the vicious realities of 1857 Utah and the road West, where Indigenous people, members of the Mormon Church and other colonizers violently clash over ownership of a territory that all involved see as rightfully theirs. Netflix describes its upcoming drama as a “fictionalized dramatization and examination of the violent collision of culture, religion and community as men and women fight and die to keep or control this land.”

Kelowna’s own Taylor Kitsch — once again joining forces with his Friday Night Lights and Painkiller director Peter Berg — stars as Isaac, a stoic man who encounters Sara Rowell (GLOW’s Betty Gilpin) on her westward journey. With her son Devin (Preston Mota) in tow, Sara recruits Isaac to be their guide and help them reach Devin’s father somewhere over the horizon.

Keeping each other safe along the way is a complicated task as danger is everywhere. Set during an incredibly tumultuous time in Utah, horrific violence was commonplace. Canadian Kim Coates (Sons of Anarchy) portrays Brigham Young, an influential early leader of the Mormon Church and the first governor of the Utah Territory. The church’s followers and militia members were responsible for the Utah War and the bloody Mountain Meadows Massacre — hostile toward any form of outsider, including the government.

Rounding out the A-list ensemble are Jai Courtney (Spartacus) as Virgil Cutter, a morally flexible trapper who makes the jump to bounty hunter; Dane DeHaan (Oppenheimer) as Jacob Pratt, a devout young Mormon whose faith is tested by the brutality of life in the West; Saura Lightfoot-Leon as Jacob’s strong-willed wife Abish; Shea Whigham (Boardwalk Empire) as Jim Bridger, founder of a key strategic fort coveted by the Mormons and the U.S. government alike; and Derek Hinkey (Horizon: An American Saga — Chapter 1) as rebellious Indigenous leader Red Feather, who is not content to let either the Mormons or the Army run roughshod over his ancestral home.

Naturally, all films and TV series based on historical events take some creative liberties with their subjects and settings, but creator and director Peter Berg wanted to make sure one part of the American Primeval story was told with as much accuracy as possible.

Indigenous cultural consultant Julie O’Keefe was brought into the series’ creative team to oversee how the three Tribal Nations — the Shoshone, Paiute and Ute tribes — were depicted. As Berg said in an interview with Tudum, “Julie was there every day making sure that we got it right — that we got the hair right, the jewelry right, the clothes right, the language right, the behaviour right, for the time period and the Nations.”

O’Keefe herself deftly summarized the importance of cultural accuracy in projects such as this one, saying to Tudum: “Imagine if you buried the Pope in lederhosen with a Buddhist nun officiating Catholic rites, while everyone danced with a Union Jack flag. That is what it looks like to see your culture misrepresented.”

As for what defines this gritty western as a whole, Berg teases: “I’m looking forward to taking viewers into the most dynamic, intense and heart-pounding survival tale humanly possible. We are going into the belly of the beast.”

The premiere of American Primeval begins streaming on Thursday, January 9, on Netflix