7 / 10. Beautifully shot, an interesting and authentic looking show with great characters and fantastic battle scenes

Frontier is an aesthetically authentic historical drama created by Rob and Peter Blackie and produced by Discovery Canada Netflix, covering the North American fur trade in a brisk and bleak 18th century Canada. Declan Harp, a half-Irish, half-Cree outlaw campaigns to breach the corrupt Hudson's Bay Company's control over the fur trade, and alliances are made and broken …

This show is beautifully shot with great sets and amazing costume design. The characters are believable, and the actors have believable accents (Scottish and Irish mainly), which isn’t always the case on American / Canadian shows.

Frontier gives an insight into an interesting aspect of history. Whilst the late 18th century era of the American War of Independence between the British and new USA has been well documented on TV and film, the fur trade aspect is a new part of history to receive such a detailed and focused TV series. Each season is only 6 episodes and interesting storylines are packed into a few episodes.

Jason Momoa is in his element here as tomahawk chucking Declan Harp, and is a formidable presence in his MASSIVE fur coat. Alun Armstrong is a great skin-crawling villain as Lord Benton. Michael Smith (Landon Liboiron) is integral to all parts of the tale and the many branches of the story converge nicely.

A standout is the versatile Greg Bryk (Bitten, The Handmaid’s Tale, and, of course, Joseph Seed in Far Cry 5) as the excellently named Cobbs Pond as a ruthlessly camp psychopath, in a fetching fox hat, engineering events cleverly to his own gain.

The fight scenes are very well choreographed and realistic, especially the scenes in Scotland in season 3, episodes 5 and 6, with music used to narrate the battle rather than voices, to haunting effect.