Now that the mercury's in full boil and "hot under the collar" is more a daily reality than an idiom, nothing tops a cool, dark cave as an escape from the desert sun that is microwaving the sky at full throttle. Whatever your "cave" configuration, odds are it has a television and that can work wonders to help you mentally beat the heat. Here are 10 shows sure to give you a brain freeze.
10. Cool Runnings
This 1993 comedy with John Candy tells the story of the first Jamaican bobsleigh team trying to make it to the Winter Olympics. But Candy's big warm heart and too many thoughts of Jamaica mitigate the chill value here.
5pm, July 10 on OSN Movies Comedy
Snowflake rating: •
9. Ice Station Zebra
Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine and Patrick McGoohan helm this Cold War naval thriller, but despite a few "Hollywood" Arctic glimpses, most of the action takes place in a comfy, cosy submarine.
8.35pm, July 13 on Turner Classic Movies
Snowflake rating: •
8. IRT: Deadliest Roads - The Andes
One can imagine the beautiful, cool, bracing breezes when you're up in the Andes at nosebleed altitude, negotiating a big rig along roads narrower than a tricycle path. And, yes, the Bolivian Cholita Wrestling Ring is a hoot, but this is not quite the total, icy bliss we crave.
11pm, July 14 on History Channel
Snowflake rating: ••
7. Ice Age
Cartoons can't give you frostbite, but there are still oodles of animated glacier ice in this 2002 movie of a sabre-toothed tiger, a sloth and a woolly mammoth who find a lost human baby.
9pm, July 12 on OSN Movies Kids
Snowflake rating: ••
6. Snow Dogs
When a Miami dentist (Cuba Gooding Jr) inherits a team of sled dogs in Alaska, he's got to learn the trade or lose his pack to a crusty mountain man (James Coburn). The howling blizzards and thin ice feel marvellous in this 2002 movie.
11am & 5pm, July 17 on OSN Movies Comedy
Snowflake rating: •••
5. Arctic Predator
Dean Cain stars in this 2010 sci-fi flick about a jack-frosty alien who's been buried in the ice for centuries and soon begins sucking the heat from Earth. Isn't that a comforting, cooling thought right now?
6pm, July 14 on OSN Movies Action
Snowflake rating: •••
4. Wildest Arctic
Vicariously feel the delicious "winter-burn" with hardy animals as they hunt to survive in fierce, wintry habitats.
11pm, today on Animal Planet
Snowflake rating: •••
3. Clinically Wild: Alaska
This series about an emergency pet clinic in Anchorage delivers a bone-chilling, deluxe ice- box. In the episode Wild Wild Winter, even the poor duck gets struck with frostbite. Now that's cold.
2.15pm, July 12 on Animal Planet
Snowflake rating:••••
2. Ice Road Truckers
The north wind throws everything winter's got at these poor saps who drive over frozen lakes. Just thinking about plunging through the ice gives a bonus "chill" up the spine. Delightful!
11pm, July 12 on History Channel
Snowflake rating:••••
1. Deadliest Catch
In cryogenic labs, there are heads blast-frozen in liquid nitrogen that don't get as subzero-gnarly as these king crab fishermen do off the coast of Alaska. You could be parboiled and poaching in a sauna, but watching this will have you chattering. When Bering Sea waves hurl car-sized slabs of ice over your head in a banshee-howling blizzard, you know you've hit the cool-off jackpot!
10pm, July 14 on Discovery; 5.15pm, Monday through Saturday on Discovery HD Showcase
Snowflake rating: •••••