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Ice Road Truckers: Difference between revisions
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In 2006, The History Channel hired Thom Beers, owner of Original Productions and executive producer of Deadliest Catch, to create a series based on the Ice Road by Beers. Shot in high definition (although the season ended before History HD was launched in the US), the show "charts two months in the lives of six extraordinary men who haul vital supplies to diamond mines and other remote locations over frozen lakes that double as roads". During the finale of the show's first season of 10 episodes, The History Channel aired a promo for season 2 which began airing on June 8, 2008. Season 1 of Ice Road Truckers was shown on the British national commercial [[Channel Five]] in February/March 2008. In Australia it aired on Austar and Foxtel in early 2008 and from June 18 it also began being shown on Network Ten. In autumn 2008 season one aired on RTL 7 in The Netherlands.
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=== Tropes related to the series: ===
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* [[Butt Monkey]]: Ray probably suffers from more breakdowns and inconvenient mechanical problems than any other driver. Arguably, he brings a lot of them upon himself by taking shortcuts and pushing himself too hard, but there's a fair amount of [[Murphy's Law]] involved as well.
** Rick is getting his fair share of this in Season 5. What can go wrong, will usually go wrong for Rick first.
* [[Canada, Eh?]]: The fact that the show takes place in Canada for the first two seasons, and continues to feature Canadian drivers after its move to Alaska (even following these drivers to Manitoba in Season 5), should theoretically demonstrate enough of "real Canada" to avert the stereotypes. However, the entire show taking place in an icy wasteland probably enforces the stereotype that all of Canada (as well as Alaska) is like this year round.
* [[Captain Obvious]]: Lisa Kelly is interviewed on [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5lpnJlSkKs Late Night with David Letterman]. Dave asks her a lot of simple questions, presumably to help the audience understand what her job is like. Lisa tries to play along but can't hide the fact that she thinks these are pretty dumb questions. [[Hilarity Ensues]].
* [[Cliffhanger Copout]]: While there's a lot of genuine danger for our truckers to encounter, the show has a habit of making minor near-misses and other oncoming obstacles look like a major threat so that they can be used as act breaks. Five to ten seconds after the commercial break, it'll usually end up being nothing to worry about.
* [[Climbing the Cliffs of Insanity]]: The entire spinoff series, ''Deadliest Roads'', is based off of this trope.
* [[Cluster F
** Dave Redmon's curse-per-minute ratio seems to have gone up significantly since his move to Alaska.
* [[Deadpan Snarker]]: Most of the truckers possess this trope in spades.
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* [[The Jimmy Hart Version]]: [[Aerosmith (Music)|Aerosmith]]'s "Living on the Edge" used to play over the opening credits; Season 5 uses a [[Suspiciously Similar Substitute]] instead.
* [[Kill It With Fire]]: Hugh nearly falls victim to this in the Season 2 finale of ''Deadliest Roads''. Hauling a load of fireworks for a village festival, he finds brush fires set in the middle of the road and drives straight through them. A few embers get sucked into his air intake, but he keeps them from destroying the whole truck by revving his engine until the increased air flow puts them out.
* [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero]]: Happens on occasion when a trucker gets a bit careless and ends up damaging his/her load as a result. Most prominent in Season 2 of ''Deadliest Roads'', when Lisa/G.W. and Tino/Tim had to take several large dinosaur models to a children's museum. Both loads arrived with serious damage due to G.W.'s maneuvering error on a bridge and Tino/Tim banging into Hugh as they raced toward their destination. Hugh was the only one to deliver his load (ceramic pots and statues) intact that day.
* [[No Fourth Wall]]: While it's obvious that participants in a reality show are aware of the show, it was still amusing to discover that Lisa owned the DVD set of the show's previous season, and planned on watching it while waiting out several days of bad weather in Prudhoe Bay, less for entertainment and more to learn from her mistakes.
* [[No OSHA Compliance]]: While the main show demonstrates rigorous safety measures taken on both the Alaskan and Canadian roads, the ''Deadliest Roads'' spinoff takes place almost entirely on roads with one lane, no guardrails, and suicidal oncoming traffic. It doesn't help that several sections of the road are either landslide-prone or ''visibly crumbling.''
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