First came Ice Road Truckers, a quasi-documentary on the History Channel about Canadians driving big trucks across frozen lakes to deliver supplies to the DeBeers diamond mine in the Arctic Circle. The show's main appeal: at any moment, you might actually see one of your favorite guys' trucks crashing through the ice and sinking like a stone to the bottom of the frozen depths.Then came The Deadliest Catch, a quasi-documentary and mini-soap opera on the Discovery Channel about Alaskans sailing big boats across the freezing Bering Sea to haul up pot after pot of Alaskan crab. The show's main appeal: at any moment, you might actually see one of your favorite crews' boats capsizing in the waves and sinking like a stone to the bottom of the frozen depths.
Now comes Verminators, a quasi-documentary on the Discovery Channel (again) about Californians driving around Los Angeles to check attics and basements for little bugs, rodents, and even pigeons. The show's main appeal: at any moment, you might actually see... er... well, not much.
Although Discovery tries hard to follow the Ice Road Deadly Catch formula, it's not exactly nail-biting drama when an exterminator finds a beehive in a closet and sprays it, or when a string of rat traps is removed from an attic (much to the horror and pain of the homeowner, who feels just sooo morally compromised by having asked for these little living creatures to be slain), or when an open church bell tower window is framed with a screen so pigeons can't get in there anymore and poop.
But that doesn't stop Discovery and its fearless bug dudes from reaching for the drama anyway. Here, the three hombres just need one o' them whistlin' Ennio Morricone spaghetti-western themes—and some o' them cool full-length badass cowboy rain slickers—to go with the terrifying voiceover:
As the colonel said on Monty Python: "Stop it, stop it—this is far too silly."
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