Bering Sea Gold

It has been a really interesting and entertaining show and was for a while, until the latest seasons. Not sure if they have new editors/production team or what, but they turned a really good show into a really, really bad and cheesy sitcom clown fiesta.

Love this show, enough to sign into IMDb and leave a review for the first time.

Bering Sea Gold features real life gold miners with a difference - dredging the ocean floor for gold, from home made punts (small boats) and super dodgy equipment.

Better than Gold Rush Alaska, Black Gold and Deadliest Catch. If you're into these kind of reality "man" shows, you will rate this highly.

Only up to episode 2 and it's got great story telling, actually quite suspenseful in parts, real characters from all walks of life and operating all sorts of equipment.

It's very similar to Gold Rush Alaska but has better content.

Editing is good, not a lot of that American "fast forward/rewind" technique like in Gold Rush & Dr. Phil...

Give it a crack and rate it. Easily a 8-9 for me.

It's a group of ragtag group of miners who are trying to find gold off shores off Nome, Alaska. There are the Pomrenkes father and son team who has a massive dredge. Scott Meisterheim is a perpetually angry drunk. Zeke Tenhoff is an obsessed driven young guy. Steve Riedel is the flake with her opera singer daughter Emily who is an amateur in this whole thing. While Vernon Adkison is an old guy who spends more money than he makes.

What I love about this show is two folds. I love the amateur and in many case experimental jerry-rigged equipment. There is no standard equipment for this type of work, and there's more duct tape than reasonably safe boats should have. I find the home grown science absolutely fascinating. The other is the distressed relationships of these people. There are some crazy personalities in this show. The only drawback like all 'reality' show is any faking. I can see some fudging going on especially with the money being discussed. The fact that so many of them do so badly seems to point to limited padding of the results. As for the dysfunctional relationship, the death of one of the divers also point to limited faking. It doesn't mean that something isn't being faked. 'Reality' isn't always reality nowadays.

Was great to watch but this last season has become silly, same views as others I fast forward the silly bits, producers are now killing what was a good series.

FIRST IMPRESSION (seasons 1 and 2)

Yes I'm hooked on this latest reality offering. BSG is a must see if you enjoy seeing a disparate group of quirky characters struggle to get rich quick. Many are up to their eyeballs in debt and need a mini El Dorado to put them back on their financial feet. Most people contemplate panning or digging for their gold. Not this group of adventurers. They all go out to sea on dinky little barges and dive for their gold. Sucking up the booty from the sea floor using industrial strength vacuum hoses. All except the Pomrenkes who mine from a massive barge using a dredge to scoop up gold bearing silt.

I love the contrasts of characters in this show. The aforementioned Pomrenkes exhibit the classic father and son schism that makes for good drama. Zeke lusts after Emily to no avail. Emily has aspirations to be an opera singer. Yeah right! And Sarah Palin had aspirations of being president. Emily's dad is a complex character who drives his boss Vern crazy. And then there's Scott, an anti hero if ever there was one. I was amazed to see him return for a second series. Not only that, he had 'friends' working on his boat. Although I don't know how long they'll last as friends.

All in all it's a very entertaining show. I doubt whether any of them will become rich but they are on an interesting journey.

LATEST IMPRESSION (seas0ons 3 and 4)

Sadly BSG has now become a farcical soap opera. Little time is now spent focusing on gold dredging. Season 4 is more about the antics of featured 'personalities' such as Brad Kelly, Shawn Pomrenke and Emily Reidel. I find none of these people particularly appealing and personally question the authenticity of this show. Some say it's scripted and I wouldn't be surprised if that was revealed to be the case. Call me cynical but I smell a rat. I now find this show hard to watch and sincerely hope the producers return the focus of the program to gold digging adventurers trying to make it big.

Season 15 Has this show finally jumped the shark with a pathetic fist fight taking place on the pier? I just laughed at what I saw.

If you also feel jaded by this version of 'reality' then you could do a lot worse than watching Yukon Gold, a show without the gimmicks that BSG feels is necessary to chase the ratings.