During the harsh winter of Canada's Northwest Territory, remote villages and work camps are cut off from the world. Truckers with nerves of steel take their lives in their hands driving heavily loaded vehicles to deliver supplies to the village citizens.
Watching these guys make their runs, it's hard not to share in their cold, fatigue and horrible highway hypnosis, that existential recognition behind the wheel late at night that the pull of sleep and the pull of death are one and the same.
What demands your attention is that the producers keep their watch over a few of the drivers, like Hugh, Alex, Rick, etc., who are great characters in their own right and have their own special sense of the gallows rides.
These big personalities keep Ice Road Truckers interesting, but viewers without a taste for rough-and-tumble guy humor -- or the show's inherent tension and somewhat salty language -- may not be in it for the long haul.
I like the idea of the show very much and its Wages of Fear vibe, but the execution is just generally lacking, and I don't know what they can do to change it, really, aside from sabotaging trucks and the road itself to ratchet up the danger and drama.
The show reveals a world most of us didn't even know existed and captures it so vividly that you can almost feel the chill of its 40-below-zero temperatures.
