‘The Last Frontier’ TV series: A plane crash, a jailbreak and CIA secrets unfold in freezing Alaska

NEW YORK (AP) – The new Apple TV+. series “The Last Frontier” begins with a plane crash in remote Alaska and a scramble for survivors. We learn the plane was carrying a nasty bunch of federal inmates. Then we find out that the nastiest of them is part of a vast CIA conspiracy.

The action hardly lets up in what’s being called a cross between “Con Air”and “The Fugitive.” Showrunner Jon Bokenkamp piles crisis after crisis in a nifty bit of hyper-aggressive storytelling.

“I am just super self-conscious about not wanting to bore the audience,” he says. “I really like something that has a kinetic energy. Sometimes I have to remind myself to slow down.”

The series stars Jason Clarke as the U.S. Marshal in charge when the inmates stage a jailbreak at 30,000 feet (9,144 meters), littering his region with desperate criminals. Of 52 inmates on the flight, 23 die, 11 are captured but 18 are missing. Asked by the feds if he has secured the perimeter, he responds: “This is Alaska. There is no perimeter.”

One of those missing inmates is a real piece of work: A lethal, intelligent CIA-trained killer who has a secret so dangerous that the agency sends one of their best to Alaska to help manage the situation, even if her allegiances are cloudy at best.

Bokenkamp, who created “The Blacklist,” has a cinematic scope and a twisted sense of humor. Like when the prisoner plane goes down after a mysterious explosion, the inmates float in zero-G like in a midair ballet as Elvis’ “Unchained Melody” plays.

“From the very opening, this isn’t going to be just straight-up action. It’s going to a little different, a little fun, a little bit of a wink,” he says. Each episode uses music cleverly and is named after a song used in that show – “Blue Skies” by Willie Nelson, “Winds of Change” by Scorpions and Hayes Carll’s “American Dream.”

There’s more than just non-stop action;, there’s also quiet moments of family and community coming together: “At the end of it, you find it’s filled you up with more than just action and cliffhangers. And that’s a good feeling, I think,” says Clarke, whose credits include “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Oppenheimer.”

The action is set against a small family drama as the marshal and his wife and son deal with old trauma. As a nurse in Fairbanks, his wife is also on the front lines as the inmates are hospitalized. “I think that’s incredibly important in 2025 to show women who are incredibly strong and who can do anything,” says Simone Kessell, who plays the marshal’s wife.

Bokenkamp and co-creator Richard D’Ovidio had originally been intrigued by the story idea of a planeload of inmates crash-landing in Manhattan during Labor Day weekend but eventually moved it rural and made it freezing. The show was filmed in Quebec, with input by U.S. Marshals from Fairbanks.

Clarke, who grew up in rural Australia, said he relished the eight-week shoot in the snow, preferring to be outdoors to being in a studio even though the cold was punishing.

“It sets a mindset that you’ve got to be switched on right from the beginning because you’ve got to wear the right gear, you’ve got to protect yourself, you’ve got to get ready for these action sequences,” he says. “It sharpened the sword rather than dulled it for me.”

“The Last Frontier” works on two levels, taking a weekly look at a different inmate on the run in the frozen tundra while also feeding the overall arc of the main secretive CIA asset story.

“We tend to take an episode and focus on a specific inmate, which gives it a little more of a procedural feel, and you get a beginning and a middle and an end,” Bokenkamp says. “I didn’t want each episode to sort of end on some cliffhanger that felt like you didn’t get an answer. I wanted it to be a full meal.”

An intriguing urban-rural divide emerges as soon as the CIA officer (played by an enigmatic Haley Bennett) arrives in Yukon Flats, clearly looking down her nose at rural folk she calls cowpokes. The locals, in turn, think she’s out of touch.

Bokenkamp has spent his life between rural Nebraska and Los Angeles and has seen how each makes stereotypes of city life and rural life. “Both places misunderstood the other,” he says. “I kind of wanted to talk about that.”

The show celebrates the close bonds and the we’re-in-it-together spirit of rural America. In places like Alaska, he says, you depend on your community. Even if you have a beef with your neighbor, that’s put aside for an emergency.

“You really can’t buy your way out of problems there. You really have to depend on one another in a way that I think is a little bit of a time capsule,” he says. “It’s a throwback for what community means. And I’m just really interested in that.”

Kessell, who lives in Australia and whose credits include “Yellowjackets,” also was moved by the idea of portraying a small town coming together to help one another.

“I think we need to see that right now on our screens,” she says. “I think we need to have hope and knowing that our neighbors will take care of us. I personally want to see that because, yes, we are in a divided time.”

She called filming in weather that was minus 25 degrees F (minus 31 C) definitely an experience. “Would I have preferred Hawaii or Sicily? Yes,” she says, laughing.