Great plains Manitoba-shot Netflix series sets beloved Ingalls clan in the actual Prairies By: Randall King Posted: 5:21 PM CDT Friday, Jul. 3, 2026

Perhaps it should not have been a significant surprise that Manitoba was chosen as the location for a new iteration of the much-beloved TV series Little House on the Prairie.

Much of the southern part of the province is, after all, authentic Prairie, visually unspoiled by power lines and paved roads.

And there is enough of it to portray a frontier wilderness that matches the source material: a series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, set in and around Independence, Kan., in the 1860s. (Manitoba also famously doubled for Kansas in the movie Capote, the Oscar-winning story of Truman Capote’s investigation of a 1959 quadruple homicide on a Kansas farm, culminating in the publication of his book In Cold Blood.)

Perhaps it was more of a surprise that the material would inspire a new interpretation landing on the streaming service Netflix.

Credit showrunner Rebecca Sonnenshine. Though Little House may be best known from the original series starring Michael Landon, which ran from 1974 to ’83, she was mostly inspired by Ingalls Wilder’s semi-autobiographical novels when she took up the task of adapting them anew for television.

“I fell in love with the books as a kid,” Sonnenshine says in a Zoom interview. “I read them until they fell apart. I still have the books. I can’t really open them because they’re so fragile at this point.

“I love the spirit of them. I love the family in them, I saw myself in Laura, and I think that the world right now is a place where we want to remember those incredible moments from our childhood. And I just wanted to be able to share it with a new generation of kids.”

Manitoba’s locations synced up nicely with Sonnenshine’s vision for the show, which stars Alice Halsey (Lessons in Chemistry) as Laura and Australian actor Luke Bracey as Charles (Pa) Ingalls, the role made famous by Landon.

“We came to Winnipeg and we saw the landscape and it really was incredible, all this Prairie, such wonderful skies, such wonderful light and very long days. And also these incredible golden hours,” she says, referring to the last hour of sunlight in a day, which gives a glowing golden hue to the atmosphere.

“That is so valuable for shooting and making it feel cinematic and beautiful. We just love it. And we love the people and we love the crew that we get to work with. It’s an incredible place.”

Even so, Little House on the Prairie shares something in common with other notable shows Sonnenshine has produced, including supernatural teen drama The Vampire Diaries and violent superhero series The Boys.

“I love world-building. I kind of come from a genre world. And the most important thing about working in genre is the emotional resonance of the characters, but also the immersive world-building,” she says.

That’s why the show may feel grittier than the original series, in which the frontier life had an overlay of Hollywood gloss. This version takes advantage of the real-life location to focus on the details of production design and period costuming, as well as shooting in the actual Prairies.

“It’s dirty. There’s wind, there’s weather, there are bugs, and it makes it feel very authentic. It feels, for us, immersive, and I think that translates for the audience that it feels immersive as well,” she says.

The resulting show looked good enough to Netflix that a second season has already been ordered, well in advance of the series première next week.

“They believe in the show and we were able to come back to Winnipeg,” Sonnenshine says. (Production of the second season has begun and will proceed until the end of October.)

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In taking on the role of frontier family man Charles Ingalls, Sydney-born actor Bracey says he considers himself lucky he didn’t come with the baggage of familiarity with the character that Landon built decades earlier.

“I was kind of a little bit blissfully ignorant of the Little House world before I came into it,” says Bracey over a Zoom call from Los Angeles to Winnipeg, where he spent months filming the first season last year.

The actor, 37, says he neither grew up with the show, nor was really aware of the worldwide scale of its appeal, which he thinks actually helped him.

“I didn’t feel the burden of it in that way,” he says. “I felt the normal burden that you want to do a good job and you want to be true to these beloved stories. And as I’ve grown to learn all about the books and the show and the stories and how much people love it, it’s less of a burden and more of a privilege, you know, to get this chance to create just a nice, good man.”

The character endures some significant hardships over the course of the series, and for his part, Bracey says shooting in the Prairie environment helps his performance; the majority of the show is shot outside in what he calls “that beautiful nature.”

“And it was such a joy,” Bracey says. “Selfishly, as an actor, it makes acting a bit easier when you’re actually outside feeling the breeze, feeling the heat, experiencing all the beautiful flora and fauna that Winnipeg and Manitoba has. It was one of the most enjoyable five months I’ve had working. And on top of that, Winnipeg is a lovely city and a really lovely community.”

Little House on the Prairie premières Thursday on Netflix.

randall.king.arts@gmail.com