Outback Opal Hunters

It's the "opal" version of Deadliest Catch or Ice Road Truckers. And just like in the other series, nothing really happens. The voice-over tries to emphasize some urgency - running out of money or time - and creates some sort of tension: "Have they found a real big opal?" And - of course - they haven't. So the episode soldiers on from location to location, about 3 or 4 in total. At the end of the episode none of the lives has really changed - except for mine since I lost about 40 minutes of my time.

Interesting subject, but way too americanized and overdramatic show. Ridiculous narrator and music, who tries to make everything sound dramatic as F.

Sad to see all these people spend their life doing ...nothing.

Although they produce quite a lot of blood (sometimes), sweat (buckets) and tears (at the end of the day) most of them never get any richer, either physically, metaphorically, intellectually or morally.

Unfortunately an image of scurrying rodents comes to mind when I see them digging in the dirt, breaking every Little Rock into even smaller pieces. Makes you wonder how many of these people commit suicide, become alcoholics or get addicted to drugs.

Like with all similar setups, the real money is made by the dealers and buyers of the Opal, who pay the diggers a pittance and sell the stuff for a fortune. Having lived in Sierra Leone almost thirty years ago and having seen what so-called 'blood diamond' does to a society I am truly appalled by this series.

I like the premise of this show. Are the opal finds staged...? I think probably. I have a hard enough time understanding Australian English. The most horrible music overplays the dialog...thus I give 5* out of 10. Lose the music and this would improve the show. However that will never happen with immature direction. This is what happens when you let children run the show.....

Having spent some time down a few holes in opal mines, I can tell you that the vast majority of those who go chasing opals are nowhere near as lucky as the mob portrayed in this series. Funny that every team that ventured down in search of opal found it! If it happened to be as easy as that to find opal, the stone would be worthless.

Talk about manufactured garbage for the mass, dumb market ... this stuff is just about as believable as the television show "Married at First Sight" and the movie "The Blue Lightning".