{"id":13208,"date":"2020-05-22T09:32:46","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T13:32:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/nat-geo-gears-barkskins-premiere\/"},"modified":"2020-05-22T09:52:41","modified_gmt":"2020-05-22T13:52:41","slug":"nat-geo-gears-up-for-barkskins-premiere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/nat-geo-gears-up-for-barkskins-premiere\/","title":{"rendered":"Nat Geo Gears Up for Barkskins Premiere"},"content":{"rendered":"

As National Geographic gears up to debut its first historical fiction series, Barkskins<\/em>, on Monday, May 25, creator, writer and showrunner Elwood Reid tells TV Drama<\/em> about bringing Annie Proulx\u2019s acclaimed novel to the small screen.<\/p>\n

The eight-part series from Scott Rudin Productions and Fox 21 Television Studios is set in New France in the 1690s, exploring the massacre of a group of settlers, with a cast that includes David Thewlis, Marcia Gay Harden, James Bloor and Christian Cooke. It premieres in the U.S. with back-to-back episodes and next-day release on Hulu.<\/p>\n

Reid, a novelist and TV writer whose credits include Cold Case<\/em>, Hawaii 5-0<\/em>, and The Chi<\/em>, was tasked with bringing Proulx\u2019s Barkskins<\/em> to life for Nat Geo. It started with a call from Carolyn Bernstein, Nat Geo\u2019s executive VP of global scripted content and documentary films, with whom Reid had worked on The Bridge<\/em> when she was at Endemol Shine. \u201cShe said it\u2019s a monster book and I\u2019m not sure it\u2019s adaptable, take a look. Scott Rudin stood out to me, Annie Proulx is an idol of mine. And then quite frankly the chance to work with Carolyn Bernstein again and do the first fictional show for Nat Geo. Everything was right. And then I read the book and knew there was not a TV show like this on right now: a costume drama with murder and guys with axes in the woods. It had a lot of interesting angles I could explore. It was a no-brainer to say yes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Barkskins<\/em> the novel spans more than 700 pages; Reid says that season one of the adaptation draws from just the first 100. \u201cWhen you leave 600 pages of a book on the table, there\u2019s a lot of room for a lot more stories. I designed it to ramp up to a high point and then just drop you off a cliff. You want to leave the audience wanting more and not feeling like they ate the whole meal. It was a very conscious decision on my part to do that. These characters need actors and I had so much fun with these actors in this world that I would love to do another season.\u201d<\/p>\n

As for juggling so many characters and storylines, Reid notes: \u201cWhen you have lots of storylines, and you\u2019re going to be moving from one to the next, you [have to] make those scenes count. So you dip into let\u2019s say Trepagny\u2019s [played David Thewlis] storyline, and I\u2019m going to give you all the good stuff. I\u2019m giving you the main course. And then we go to the next pot of characters. Everything moves. It\u2019s not five scenes where I can see Trepagny walking through the woods and talking. You leave the scene at a high point and go to the next storyline. I was trying to tell a really big story and I knew I\u2019d have a lot of characters so I laid down tracks as fast as I could. If you watch the first episode, a lot of shit goes down. Every episode is like that. I like shows that have a lot of nooks and crannies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having worked on many crime dramas in the past, Reid was eager to bring some of the sensibilities of procedurals to the historical fiction space. \u201cOne thing I noticed about those shows is, the minute there\u2019s a body, people by and large, no matter how bad what follows is, are going to stick around to find out what happened and why did they do it. It\u2019s a very effective motor and I think we tend to only apply it to cops in Armani suits walking around cities. Why not transplant some of that motor into period drama? I think it really works. It felt good to be able to drive the story around a central mystery. One thing you always have in a procedural is this train track. You can diverge off that train track but the minute you get back on that story track the pace picks up. It\u2019s very comforting to have that as a writer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Look out for a longer interview with Reid in TV Drama Weekly<\/em> next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As National Geographic gears up to debut its first historical fiction series, Barkskins, on Monday, May 25, creator, writer and showrunner Elwood Reid tells TV Drama about bringing Annie Proulx\u2019s acclaimed novel to the small screen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":13209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70],"tags":[3877,3878,1940],"class_list":["post-13208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-top-stories","tag-barkskins","tag-elwood-reid","tag-national-geographic","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nNat Geo Gears Up for Barkskins Premiere - TVDRAMA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/nat-geo-gears-up-for-barkskins-premiere\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nat Geo Gears Up for Barkskins Premiere - TVDRAMA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As National Geographic gears up to debut its first historical fiction series, Barkskins, on Monday, May 25, creator, writer and showrunner Elwood Reid tells TV Drama about bringing Annie Proulx\u2019s acclaimed novel to the small screen.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/nat-geo-gears-up-for-barkskins-premiere\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVDRAMA\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-05-22T13:32:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-05-22T13:52:41+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2017\/07\/Barkskins-NatGeo-520.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"319\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/nat-geo-gears-up-for-barkskins-premiere\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/nat-geo-gears-up-for-barkskins-premiere\/\",\"name\":\"Nat Geo Gears Up for Barkskins Premiere - TVDRAMA\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-05-22T13:32:46+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-05-22T13:52:41+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/nat-geo-gears-up-for-barkskins-premiere\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/nat-geo-gears-up-for-barkskins-premiere\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/nat-geo-gears-up-for-barkskins-premiere\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Nat Geo Gears Up for Barkskins Premiere\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/\",\"name\":\"TVDRAMA\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvdrama\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\",\"name\":\"Mansha Daswani\",\"description\":\"Mansha Daswani is the editor-in-chief and associate publisher of World Screen. 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