American Primeval, a new Netflix limited series about the Utah War in the 1850s, isn’t afraid to dramatize the horrors of the Old West. Directed by Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) and written by Mark L.

While Brigham Young (Kim Coates) succeeds in burning down Jim Bridger’s (Shea Whigham) beloved fort, Bridger survives the fire. In real life, Jim Bridger would head east to plea his case to the U.S. Government against Young. Fort Bridger would be resurrected as a key U.S. military base of operations and Bridger wouldn’t die until 1881.

Netflix's most ambitious western to date explores the conflicts that threaten to destroy pluralistic societies

In the catalog of the modern western, a lot of space is given to stories focused on what is assumed to have been the sheer miserableness of life on the frontier. Viscous carpets of mud. Frigid snowscapes. Scalpings. Rapes. The sibilant impact of arrows puncturing flesh.

Creator Mark L. Smith's six-episode examination of scruffy, vicious people traversing the Utah Territory in 1857 also stars Taylor Kitsch and Dane DeHaan.

Peter Berg directs an epic six-part drama about the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1857, in which more than 100 settlers were murdered by militant Mormons.

In Netflix’s new limited series, “American Primeval,” written by “The Revenant” scribe Mark. L. Smith, audiences are thrust into the viciousness of the American West, specifically the Utah Territory in 1857.

The Western can be a deeply romantic genre with white hats and black hats, dusty streets and beautiful sunsets. Great films and TV series have broken with our rose-colored expectations of the American frontier,