‘Dangerous Grounds,’ full of beans

A travel documentary can usually provide visuals of what it's covering: a museum, a natural wonder, a fine restaurant. That's not always easy when the subject of the documentary is danger.

 

The premiere episode of the Travel Channel's new documentary series "Dangerous Grounds," in which a coffee merchant and adventurer named Todd Carmichael travels to reportedly hazardous regions to seek out and purchase fine local coffee beans, journeys to remote mountainous areas of Haiti, where, Carmichael keeps telling us, he could be attacked at any moment by armed thugs.

 

As we wait endlessly for them to show up, his warnings gradually lose effect and start to seem a little silly. Fortunately, the classic story line — a journey into unknown territory in search of treasure — is otherwise handled well. Carmichael is energetic, and the locations are eye-catching. The show is a decent source of armchair adventure and fun facts.

 

The premiere episode, airing tonight at 10 (the show's regular time slot is Tuesdays at 9), starts off in Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, where we see a lot of ruined buildings and glowering locals. Carmichael goes to a market and asks a man selling coffee where he might be able to locate a strain of coffee called typica, which goes back more than 200 years to when Haiti was a leading exporter of coffee.

 

The real payoff for the market visit comes soon after, when a scuffle allows Carmichael and his cameraman to flee as if they were the focus of the potential violence. It's the only visual evidence of danger in the entire episode.

 

Carmichael then meets with a local whom he calls "the pope of coffee," who tells Carmichael that if he attempts to buy directly from the coffee farmers in the mountains, he will be going to war with the middlemen who control the trade. Although we never hear the pope say this, Carmichael tells us that the region he's going to be exploring is dominated by a violent man called the President.

 

Carmichael and the cameraman head for the hills anyway. He says that they plan to go as high as they can and find a farmer who is willing to defy the President so they can pay a fair price directly to the producer.

 

We're never in danger of forgetting that the President or his men could strike at any moment. But we have to take Carmichael's word for this.

 

Carmichael is one of those know-it-all traveling companions who are annoying until you're in a scrape. He can repair the truck and has what sounds like good advice about traveling in areas where bad guys are afoot. For example, he says you have a better chance of escaping alive when sleeping under a truck than in a tent.

 

He treats the cameraman like a wimpier little brother. After their escape from the scuffle at the marketplace, Carmichael points out that the cameraman is shaking like a leaf.

 

The episode ends satisfyingly, even though some questions remain: What exactly constitutes a fair price for a commodity with such high markups? And would a farmer who cuts a deal with Carmichael be putting himself in real danger? If so, is it ethical to offer him a higher price and then just head off?

 

Along the way, we learn about how coffee is grown and processed. Coffee fans will be inspired to head out to their local high-end provider, even if it's just the place that Carmichael refers to dismissively as "the green mermaid."

 

Carmichael says that he's looking for coffee that will make people who first taste it say, "Something just changed in my life." Most coffee drinkers are only expecting something that is a little different and gives a bit of a lift. By those standards, "Dangerous Grounds" works just fine.