TVSquad

One of the most eagerly anticipated new series from USA Network, In Plain Sight, will premiere on June 1st, a week earlier than previously announced. The Mary McCormack-Frederick Weller drama, the latest in USA's "characters welcome" campaign, was originally going to air on Sunday, June 8th, at 10 p.m., but that would have put the show up against two tough cable competitors -- the return of Lifetime's Army Wives for a second season, and History Channel's second year of Ice Road Truckers. This is USA's way of giving In Plain Sight a leg up on the competition -- unless Lifetime moves Army Wives and History moves IRT, respectively, to June 1st. Quick, who's going to blink?

After making Deadliest Catch a huge hit for the Discovery Channel back in 2006, and still going strong, Thom Beers' Original Productions struck gold again with The History Channel's adrenaline rush Ice Road Truckers. Catch chronicles the real-life adventures of Alaskan crab fishers, considered one of the most dangerous jobs in the world, while Truckers is about one of the most dangerous jobs on land, driving big rigs in the Northern Canadian provinces over frozen lakes.

Now, according to Zap2It, Beers has inked an aggressive deal with NBC for three new shows. The network has given a 10-episode commitment to all three and guaranteed they will run at least two in prime time. So what are they about? Apparently, it didn't matter because Beers is working with the network now to figure out the subjects for all three.

One of my favorite series this summer has been Ice Road Truckers on the History Channel. If you haven't seen it, a quick synopsis: truck drivers in northern Canada haul critical supplies hundreds of miles across frozen lakes to diamond mines owned by DeBeers and other corporations.

Ice Road Truckers is the kind of reality show I can dig, because it features real people with an extraordinary occupation. There's some drama, but it's never contrived or played up for the cameras. I stopped watching Dog the Bounty Hunter because I got sick of egregious musical cues dictating when I was supposed to feel something, and Ice Road Truckers is mercifully void of such manipulation. The fact that these men are driving heavy rigs with only a few inches of ice between themselves and the water is dramatic enough.