FRIDAY NIGHT isn't quite golden on the Discovery Channel, but it glitters enough to satisfy the millions of people for whom “finding gold” is still the ultimate financial fantasy.
“Gold Rush,” which follows a bunch of guys hoping to strike it rich in Alaska, has become Discovery’s most popular show.
The team had a disappointing second season, fans may recall, which the producers are hoping will bring a sense of renewed drama and urgency to season three.
Miner Todd Hoffman helps by announcing that if he doesn’t find a thousand ounces of gold this year, 10 times his take last time, he’s taking his dream elsewhere.
Other dreams have grown as well. What hasn't changed is the core action of the show, which inevitably comes back to the nuts and bolts of gold mining.
Miners put shovels in the ground, sift through dirt, look for gold in pans. Victory lies in flakes, not in nuggets, and after a while, we’ve kind of seen it before.
“Jungle Gold” feels a little fresher, largely because George Wright and Scott Lomu skip frozen Alaska for the lawless land of Ghana.
Finding the gold can be the least of a miner’s problems there.
Wright and Lomu are former real estate millionaires who went bust and now say they need a million-dollar gold strike to put their lives back together and feed their families back in Utah.
It turns out they aren’t exactly rookies. They have experience and contacts in Ghana, not to mention a backer who will finance expensive land leases and excavation machinery.
It feels somehow as if there’s a backstory here we don’t fully know about. Still, their adventures are instructive and the dangers seem genuine.
In “Jungle Gold,” as in “Gold Rush,” those who get the gold have earned it.
"Gold Rush: Do or Die": Friday at 7:30 p.m., 2 stars
"Jungle Gold'': Friday at 10 p.m., 3 stars
Source : nydailynews[dot]com
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