The folks out at Animal Planet shipped me out a copy of Jockeys season 2, so I took a look at it and I have to admit, what I found wasn’t exactly what I figured would happen.  I figured I was going to be subjected to some boring sludge about how horses are soooo mistreated by the very existence of the racing sport, but what I got was much different–I got a great and engaging look at a partnership between man and beast.

Jockeys follows a season of horse racing with the crew in the saddles–namely, the Jockeys.  There’s a whole lot going on behind the scenes of your typical race season, and Jockeys will give you a look inside the whole thing.  Basically, all you have to do is imagine a standard NASCAR season with horses instead of cars and you get a pretty good idea of what’s constantly going on with the jockeys of Jockeys.

You wouldn’t imagine that horses could wreck, until you watch just a couple minutes of Jockeys.

You wouldn’t imagine that horse racing has fatalities.

You wouldn’t imagine a whole lot of things that Jockeys is going to show you, but the inability to imagine it really doesn’t matter.  You’ll see young up and comers take on the biggest names in the race–failure and success on a grand scale.

I’m astonished by the sheer amount of information here, and it’s presented in a downright fascinating way.  In fact, it’s kind of scary…the depth of the information here is just…just amazing.

Of course, that’s also the problem with Jockeys.  If you don’t have any interest in horse racing, well, Jockeys is going to be completely lost on you.  You’ve got to have at least a passing familiarity with racing, horses, or both in order to get any kind of enjoyment out of Jockeys.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, therefore, gives a seven out of ten to this incredible series that owns its niche with incredible authority and excellent presentation skills, but recognizes that this is such a narrow niche that most people won’t care either way.