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.

Lights" creator Peter Berg makes the wild west look like hell on Earth in "American Primeval." There's some good between all the blood.

Netflix's limited series starring Betty Gilpin and Taylor Kitsch plays out against the background of the so-called Utah War.

The first reviews for Netflix's brutal Western are out, and the critic response thus far has been mixed, to say the least.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.