Watching “Tougher in Alaska,” you might find yourself thinking several things: How the tasks (like gold mining, salmon fishing, railroading) aren’t just hard, they’re difficult in ways you never imagined, and being in Alaska makes them even tougher.
“Tougher in Alaska” makes a strong case that the work it documents is taxing, risky — and cold! But the people who do it seem to love it, and to love the vast, untamed frontier embracing them in the 49th state.
Geo Beach loves it, too. He’s your rough-and-tumble guide for the series (airing 8 p.m. Thursdays on History). And he brings been-there- done-that authority to his hosting role.
An Alaskan for a quarter-century, he has been a logger, firefighter and commercial fisherman. He’s at home around construction sites and oil spills.
“That’s how I paid for my writing habit,” says Beach, a former New Englander who in Alaska found a rich source of material for the commentaries and essays he turns out for various publications, websites and public radio.
Add to his qualifications the booming voice, chrome dome and overgrown-kid gusto, and Beach was a natural to make the jump to TV to showcase the state he calls, with proud accentuation, “uh-LAHHSSSS-kuh.” This week, Beach joins power company workers as they face fearsome snow loads, high winds and subzero temperatures. Future episodes tackle road building, policing and waste disposal, Alaska style.
“Tougher in Alaska” joins a growing genre most easily labeled Tough TV. In this category, testosterone reigns supreme as men (and a scattering of women) clash with nature (“Man vs. Wild” on Discovery), other tough guys (Spike’s “The Ultimate Fighter”), bad guys (“Dog the Bounty Hunter” on A&E), or tasks so yucky only tough guys wouldn’t lose their breakfast (Discovery’s “Dirty Jobs”).
“Deadliest Catch,” in its third hit season on Discovery, focuses on crab-fishing in the Bering Sea off the Alaska coast. Spike has more Tough TV planned, including “River Men” (toiling on the Mississippi), the bounty hunters “Tank and Cobra” and “USA vs. The World,” which promises to pit “average Americans who do some of the roughest jobs in the world” against their professional counterparts from other countries.
“We’re not kickboxing bears up here. This is not a carnival sideshow,” he declares during a recent phone call from his home. “Other (documentary) shows may be about jobs,” he goes on. “But up here, a job is more than something you clock into at 9 and clock out of at 5. The work is part of a lifestyle, and part of a community, of a whole sense of place.”
Beach (who prefers Geo, with its earthly associations, over his given name of George) has been busy on the 13-episode “Tougher in Alaska” for a year. At each site he and a three-person crew “got immersed with the workers,” he says, “in a challenging, awesome environment, working with them.”
