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.

The director of "American Primeval" stops by IndieWire's Filmmaker Toolkit podcast to talk about how he embarked on the toughest shoot of his career.

The 19th-century American West of American Primeval is a land of unyielding brutality, though nothing about this six-part Netflix series, premiering Jan. 9, is as violent as Peter Berg’s belligerently over-the-top direction.