Frontier is a Canadian historical drama television series co-created by Rob Blackie and Peter Blackie, chronicling the North American fur trade in 18th Century Canada/Rupert's Land, sometime between the years of 1763 and 1779. The series is co-produced by Discovery Canada, as the channel's first original scripted commission, and Netflix. The series premiered on November 6, 2016. The series was renewed for a second season in October 2016, ahead of its premiere, which premiered on October 18, 2017. Frontier was renewed for a third season on September 20, 2017, also ahead of the previous second season. The entirety of the third season premiered first on Netflix on November 23, 2018, and was broadcast in Canada between December 7 and 21, 2018.
Synopsis
The series chronicles the North American fur trade in late 1700s Canada, and follows Declan Harp, a part-Irish, part-Cree outlaw who is campaigning to breach the Hudson's Bay Company's monopoly on the fur trade in Canada, which has become corrupt and engages in illegal activities to enrich itself.
The series is produced in 4Kultra high definition; on January 8, 2016, Bell Media confirmed that Frontier would stream in 4K via the Discovery Go app exclusively on Samsung 4K smart TVs. The series premiered on November 6, 2016. The series was renewed for a second season in October 2016, ahead of its premiere, which premiered on October 18, 2017. Frontier was renewed for a third season on September 20, 2017, also ahead of the previous season. The entirety of the third season premiered first on Netflix on November 23, 2018, and was broadcast in Canada between December 7 and 21, 2018. Internationally, the series is distributed by Netflix, with the first season available from January 20, 2017. An exclusivity agreement meant that the series would not be available on Netflix in Canada until 2017.
Reception
The first season received mixed reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes it has an approval rating from critics of 43% based on 14 reviews, with the site's consensus reading "Jason Momoa's powerhouse performance as Declan Harp is ultimately weighed down by Frontier often sluggish storytelling"; however, it has an audience approval rating of 79%. Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average to critic reviews, gave the series an average score of 52 out of 100, based on reviews from 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". In a positive review, John Doyle of The Globe and Mail described the series as "an action-packed, uncomplicated and very entertaining yarn about the cutthroats who created this country by plundering it, when they weren't busy killing each other". Doyle felt the opening episode's handling of interactions with First Nations was handled "delicately," commenting that Frontier was "far from being a whitewashed tale about the English, Scots, Irish and French battling out for possession of fur and land".
