If it’s January it must be Dakar on cable. For my money, and if you saw my cable bill you’d agree, the best produced sports show on the tube — period. Slo-mo, helicopter, POV, remote and static shots are edited and fed around the world for near-real time consumption.

These are not the yahoos from nascar a hootin’ an’ a hollerin’ over a coma inducing blur of left-to-right stereo accompanying round and round and round look-alikes all following the same line for hours on end. No. If you’ve ever left the safety of your driveway and ridden around the house to the back yard, you’ll instantly identify with the crowd that populates Dakar.

The first stage out of Portugal was a sand miner’s nightmare. American Chris Blaise riding the lone Red Bull KTM ended up 7th, not bad but perhaps a little disappointing. His quote? “I’d never seen sand between pine trees before.” We hear ‘ya, so for added dimension you can try out the Croom Motorcycle Area in the Withlacoochee State Forest near Brooksville, Florida for a taste.

Following recent broadcasts the stages feature no-nonsense informed commentary, primarily play-by-play with just a touch of color for insight. We can anticipate a heavy-metal driven wrapup, probably with amicable but overexposed Al Trautwig injecting drama at the expense of insight, following the conclusion.

For schedule info, head for .VS, which used to be the Outdoor Living Network but in a spasm of what-the-hell rebranding richochet, apparantly after a Jolt Cola and Monster fueled all-nighter, is now the “versus” cable slot. If you don’t get it, find someone who does. It’s that good. Seriously.

Also replays several times as summary.