American Primeval ’s director and executive producer Peter Berg ( Friday Night Lights) knows that depicting real events isn’t without its challenges, and while much of what’s depicted on screen is dramatized,

Netflix‘s new limited series American Primeval gives a startling look at the American West in the mid-1800s, when Native Americans came to deadly blows with Mormon soldiers, pioneers looking for a new life,

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.