I don’t think the UK/Ireland version of The History Channel is as piss poor as its US counterpart but I find it strange that they don’t buy more shows from the BBC/ITV/C4/RTÉ et al. There are some fantastic history programmes made by all those stations that rarely get repeated. One would think the History Channel would be the perfect forum for this stuff.
And DIY Network. Don’t forget them. :rolleyes:
I find PBS’ quality of programming much better than the cable channels, on the whole.
How about Gangland? A series that showcases every obscure pack of louts in every sizable town in the US.
“And the Janesville Stinkies were there to make sure everybody knew who ran the central part of the eastern part of southern Wisconisn”
I’m its sake I’m glad the HC is a bunch of silly shit, so that the punks gathered around the TV watching their episode are hammocked between Nostradamus and Pawn Stars, not Hitler and Ghengis Khan
Not only that, he ran up the steps in Philadelphia, not New York. (For that matter, the Rocky theme is actually called Gonna Fly Now.)
Someone tell me what the hell “Iceroad Truckers” has to do with history?
(“Clash of the Gods” is a good series in regards to the history of Greek mythology. That and our very own Cal Meacham was on the “Medusa” episode.) Mythology history (NOT the Nostradamus crap), such as say, folk traditions and the like, can be interesting. Like talking about WHERE certain traditions we have today come from.
History International* is better, but it’s only available with digital cable. The original channel has just gone to shit.
*For example, I saw a program earlier today on the Red Baron. He was actually pretty hot.
I remember back when they were practically the only cable channel that had actual content at 3:00am. When everyone else was airing infomercials, they’d have bad war movies on.
Any channel that can do four hours on the Pompeii sex industry will always have a viewership. 
I do wish they’d stop with the Dan Brown worship, though.
The History Channel incarnation of UFO Hunters was actually pretty good and interesting. The team was balanced a bit, a couple of the guys seemed to jump on the “it’s proof” bandwagon pretty fast but I think there were also a couple who never came to that conclusion throughout the run (at least in the season I watched). I recall one episode where one of the guys decided a couple of their interviewees might be alien human hybrids and a second guy basically pulled him aside and game him the biggest “are you fucking retarded?” Rant I’ve ever seen. Their tech guy was cool too, he could come up with an model recreation for just about anything, usually ending in “oh by the way, [air currents | aviation training | whatever] acts like this regularly so… yeah, debunked.” It was probably one of the best shows on ETs I’ve seen. Of course, they may have canceled that too. I don’t check the channel much anymore so I don’t know.
Edit: And Monster Quest isn’t so bad if you ignore the over-dramatic narrator.
They had an hour on the Mountain Meadows Massacre of 1847, yestreday. I never heard of it before. That was a good show.
He also never married and is not known to have been… intimately involved with anyone, of either gender. Shot down by an Australian with a machine-gun on the ground, and his plane was stripped before the engine had cooled down. Bits of the plane are on display in the Australian War Memorial in Canberra, which is well worth a visit.
It was originally a two-hour special about the history of the Alaskan trucking industry.
I have to admit though I do like Pawn Stars on History, sort of an amalgamation of
Antiques Roadshow, Mythbusters and The Real World. It has a little history in evaluating some of the historical items up for sale.
O man…I read that and my inner voice sounded exactly like the narrator on that show.
{screams and runs away}
Yes, that’s what they said. Apparently, according to his Wiki entry, he didn’t want to leave any woman a war widow, considering the survival rate of pilots.
I also saw a piece one day on the true story of the Bridge on the River Kwai. Apparently, the movie downplayed some of what the men truly went through. It made the Hanoi Hilton sound like a cake walk.