Ax Men: Season One

Introduction

Following on from the success of Ice Road Truckers, The History Channel now brings us Axmen. This series follows four logging companies in Oregon, on the Pacific North West of the United States as they look to make money from this important US industry and take the necessary risks to bring down and recover trees at 70 foot plus.

The four companies followed are:

JM Browning Logging
Gustaffson Logging
Pihl Logging
Stump Branch Logging



There's a definate pecking order to these companies with both Gustaffson and Pihl Logging being relatively middle of the road operations. At the top of the pile is JM Browning Logging, which has a reputation of being the best in the business, using the best equipment and having the largest operation - the downside to this being that with the largest running costs they need the biggest jobs in order to keep going. At the bottom end of the scale is newcomer Stump Branch Logging which hires hungry young guns, uses second hand equipment and takes the riskier jobs that no one else wants.

The series follows the ups and downs of the four companies as they try to clear their assigned sections of woodland, introducing members of each crew and showing them at work in this dangerous industry.

Extras

Glossary - text-based extra that helpfully explains some of the logging industry terms used in the series, although most if not all of these are explained in context as they come up.

The History Channel Promo - glorified trailer for the parent channel, quite good actually but then I'm a fan…

Overall

I'm a lumberjack and I'm ok…

I haven't seen Ice Road Truckers but if this series is an indication then it's a bit of a corker. The premise is really simple, just set a series of hand-held camera operators to follow this rough and ready loggers at work (no play) as they knock down trees. I guess that this is real reality TV rather than the dross that appears on UK channels, but it feels more like a documentary series. As with the best series, this really does draw you in and part of that is the obvious risk and danger that these men find themselves in on a daily basis; it's one of those industries where the premise is simple and everyone thinks that they could do it no sweat, but actually would baulk at just how hard and dangerous it is.



Admittedly the narration tends to be a bit overly dramatic (with endless slo-mo repeated footage at times), emphasising on a regular basis just how dangerous this job is; so much so that it gets a bit annoying. But then on a couple of occasions something happens that just proves it. On one occasion a flying choker on the end of long steel cable brushes the arm of one of the loggers after his foot becomes wedged between logs. Travelling at 80 mph+, if it had hit him full on, he would have been sliced in half. On a second occasion the stand in operator for the skyline (which pulls felled logs up the hills) moves the wrong lever and the engine block crashes to the earth narrowly missing one of the cameramen. It's a credit to both that both brush this off as if nothing had happened.

My other minor annoyance is that the series tries to set up the companies as being in competition and has a log load tally at the end of each programme to show how many full trucks each company has sent to the mill. There's no real need for this as although it's interesting to see how many trucks each company fills, they are clearly not rivals for some prize, they're all just trying to make money from various jobs in the North West Oregon forests.

The end of the series is where it really gets interesting though as a massive storm hits the North West, the worst storm in the area for 45 years (the series being filmed in 2007). This storm is of the same scale as Hurricane Katrina but didn't, as far as I'm aware, didn't receive the same news coverage in this country. Regardless the storm killed a total on 13 people in this remote-ish area and submerged many homes in 5 foot of water. You see the effect on both the personal and professional lives of these simple tough men and just admire their courage and work ethic. They just get on with it, whether it's clearing a house of all their ruined possessions and looking to just start again or just looking to recover their equipment so that they can find a new job for their companies.

The only drawback for me was that this series was provided on DVD-R's and so the picture wasn't always as good as it should have been. That said, they were authored as per the retail versions and the picture and sound quality was on the whole very good.

Superb stuff.