Ice Road Truckers

Used to be interesting despite the overall repetitive nature of it harping on the dangers seemed neverending to pad it out.Had seen it for a while but just started watching again and it really has rapidly declined into a soapie,hugh & vlad are just totally loathsome backstabbing babies.Even Darryls become quite irritating the whole thing is now too repetitive & scripted

I had always been baffled about why this shot-in-Canada show, which I'd heard was such a big deal in the US and overseas, never aired on any of the Canadian networks. Then I got around to picking up a season one DVD set on eBay and the mystery was quickly solved. If you've ever done any serious winter driving on any of our worst stretches of highway (e.g., Calgary to Revelstoke at night with road conditions rated "poor") you've already experienced white-knuckle driving that's at least as scary as anything you'll see on this show. For the average Canuck, this series is about as exciting as watching people drive to the supermarket (in fact in most cities that's more likely to be a lethal proposition than is a trip up the Ice Road.) One thing I did appreciate, however, is that -- notwithstanding the stereotypical ice-and-snow motif that forms the obvious foundation of the program -- the producers give Canada a very fair, balanced, and generally positive portrayal. This is one of those rare occasions when we come off more as a modern economic powerhouse that just happens to have some very cold bits, rather than a nation of backwards, mostly frozen eh-sayers living in a 19th-century wasteland denominated primarily by beaver pelts, maple syrup and lumberjacks.

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.

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.

Basically, it's show of where the premise of possible disaster is the entertainment while also filled with fake scinarios (scripted hostility between main characters).