An Klondike is a golden opportunity for Irish actors

Steve Wall is among the stars of a major new TV drama about the Irish in the Klondike, writes Richard Fitzpatrick

ABÚ Media, the producers of An Klondike, have hit pay dirt with their new four-part series on the great gold rush that swept across Canada’s Yukon Territory in the late 1890s. It was a fever that gripped thousands of Irish emigrants as well as a quarter of Seattle’s police force (and even the city’s mayor, who resigned his post and bought a steamboat to ferry prospectors to the Klondike).

One of the things that makes An Klondike, which begins on TG4 this week, distinct from other drama series and novels about the period is that their central characters speak Irish, mixed in with English-speaking characters, as would have been the case at the time.