All six episodes were provided prior to broadcast.

If it’s possible for a show to be remarkably unremarkable, Netflix’s Frontier, a co-production with Discovery Channel Canada, makes an exceptional case. Grizzled and merciless, yet also drab and un-involving, this 18th Century-based period drama is dark, brooding and quite violent. No doubt of that. But there’s little that makes it unique or intriguing, especially in its muddled execution. Cold, monotonous, dimly lit and fairly shallow in its approach, it’s almost as if the freshman series tries to be as dull as possible. In this age of modern television, especially during its peak era, it’s a starkly mediocre piece of work.

In 1670, King Charles II grants England’s Hudson’s Bay Company land they can’t rightfully claim. Occupied by “aboriginal peoples for thousands of years,” as the opening credits put so elegantly, they once held a dominant fur trading monopoly,...