watched the new "Coal" programme on Discovery last night. Basically a revisiting of the "rednecks with dirty faces" genre, along the lines of "Deadliest Catch" and "Ice Road Truckers".

This may or not work... DC has the ever-reliable sea-and-spray shots and some very dramatic camera work, although frankly I think it's somewhat overdone by now; IRT is a thoroughly enjoyable piece of hokum in the American style, with the aforementioned camera treats and quite clever scripting to produce a quasi-soap with a fairly limited cast presenting a recognisable caricature of life-as-is.

I wasn't much impressed with the attempts to transfer the same format to logging or land-rig drilling, and the recent one about prospectors in Alaska simply came across as a bunch of idiots who had no business being there.

Whether "Coal" will work, I'm still waiting. Certainly the first one presented a rather scary picture of under-resourced, under-budgeted small-mine operations in the Appalachians which at times, put me in mind of "The Deer Hunter" or "All The Right Moves"... but it could be good.

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Like most Amazing American documentaries, I expect the most Astounding problem with it will be the Awesome amount of Incredible adjectives that manage to squeeze into even the most mundane of sentences…

oh, you saw it as well? :lol:

joking apart, from experience of rig-pigs and good ol' boys from Redneck County, South Texaco, it looked pretty familiar... right down to the continuous-miner operator with the pick-up truck and Martin geee-tar who sounded as though he did the voice for Boomhauer in "King of the Hill".

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