Ice Road Truckers

Channel 5's new television series, "Ice road truckers" was suitably intriguing at first sight. Further into the series we are introduced to more and more characters and we see their personalities unravel before our eyes.

We learn about aspects of their job such as the huge machines they use to carry out their bidding, and what kind of a life they lead while trawling the Ice Road. All the truckers we see are working for the head honcho "Hugh Roland" a big, hairy, macho man nick named "the polar bear" by his employees.

Soon enough, the true personality of the drivers is revealed; from the very likable southern Californian "T.J." to the rather arrogant Rick Yemm. That brings me to another point, the swearing. Unfortunately the drivers tend to swear every other sentence which leads to a series of very annoying beeps.

The introduction for every episode has so far been repeated from the pilot episode, which has lots of cheesy introductions like Alex's line where he says "It's called the dash for the cash" which makes for some cringe worthy viewing. Apart from these small hang ups (and all the other stuff I have no doubt forgotten) Ice road truckers makes for a likable documentary and some easy Friday night viewing.

Unfortunately another victim of what started out interesting is now overly repetitive,padded out for time,overplayed & just too contrived.Fake tension & poor acting have taken over from a few interesting situations & some rather ninkompoopish people being thrust into jobs they shouldn't be anywhere near.Then there's the big talking hugh finally showing his true self the biggest backstabber ever,then a grovelling pos promising the world to those he's shafted for ages,not to mention the unsafe practices just a big mouth backstabbing buffoon a pathetic excuse of a big baby

The show is OK, but that narrator??!! Is he trying to imitate John Wayne or Howard Cosell? He has a halting, style so slow I could make a ham sandwich between words. He narrates many A&E shows, but for some reason his delivery is slower on I.R.T. He's also using a weird kind of accent he doesn't use on the other shows he narrates. The Characters are colorful enough, but I can't take the narration for very long. Apart from the narration, it's better than anything else during the summer rerun season on Sunday night. All in all, I think I'd rather spend a week on a crab boat and make twice as much as these guys without the expense of a big rig.

So maybe I was a little harsh in the summary, It does have some entertaining aspects. But after so many seasons the only thing really keeping it going is the drama and adding new characters. Which i'm not saying is a bad thing, the show is about the people driving these trucks through lovely weather and of course, ice crossings. If your looking for documentary type show just about ice road trucking though, this really isn't it. That could be made into a 2 hour documentary. Or just watch the 1st season and ya get the picture. If your into the people and the drama though, then keep on watching. There was a separate season where a few of the characters from the show like Lisa Kelly and Darrel Ward, went to South America driving truck on some of the worst roads in the world. I found that to be much more entertaining, and I believe far more dangerous as well. Driving a old piece of a crap truck on a 1 lane road with a mountain on one side and a vertical cliff on the other is somethin else entirely.

What bothers me is EVERY single time a truck goes across the ice they play "life threatening" ice cracking/popping sounds and then as the truck nears the other side they play this climactic siren music as if to scare you into not knowing if the truck is going to fall through or make it across. It becomes SOOO annoying!! In the dead of winter the chance of a truck falling through is very very slim. What they don't show is the tons of other trucks that are going across the ice. At the end of the season is when it becomes much more dangerous. If they were to save the climactic music and cracking sounds till the actual more dangerous times they're crossing the ice, it would make it so much more impactful! Not to mention the narrator over-hyping things as well. When it gets slick, the trucks drifting their trailers/cargo around corners is pretty cool i must say.

So all-in-all if ya like the drama of the show and the characters, keep on watchin, otherwise just watch the documentary or the 1st season. I do really recommend the season that was in South America to anyone. The environment, the native people, the culture, the danger, the language barrier played such a huge roll. I wont spoil anything, but I can see why there was only 1 season of that.

In addition to so many other programs oriented towards certain adventurous professions, this one at least has charisma and better pictures. The job is also interesting, but could be processed in a more informative way. Nevertheless, the show is fun, especially in the sense of a little pastime and dreaming of the cold northern regions of the world.