New Season of Surprisingly Popular 'American Pickers' Premieres Tonight

Who'da thunk it? A show about two normal-looking dudes rummaging through barnyards and jam-packed homes in the far corners of the Midwest is a runaway success for The History Channel.

"American Pickers" starts a new season tonight, and there will be far more people watching than you would imagine.

When the show launched in 2010, it was the highest rated premiere in History Channel's history. Lest you think that's just an exceptionally low bar to meet, realize that the show pulled off a respectable 2.3 million viewers this last Monday in re-runs, more than the heavily-hyped Bravo reality show "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills."

The July premiere, which benefitted by some crossover promo with "Pawn Stars," brought in a whopping 6.3 million viewers, making it one of the most popular cable reality shows on the air. And you thought only guidettes, gorillas and vacuous housewives drew ratings.

Make no mistake about it, the success of the show lies largely in the truly likable co-stars of the show, Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz, and the "Charlie's Angels"- like interaction they have with their cute, heavily-inked dispatcher and co-hort Danielle Colby-Cushman, who sends them out on "assignment" to far-off locales across rural America, digging through yards of people's collectible life detritus to find what they hope will be valuable gold.

As with "Pawn Stars," another popular History Channel show, and PBS' "Antiques Roadshow," the series appeals to the part of all of us that secretly suspected that weird lamp in the corner of grandma's parlour room might very well be some lamp collector's Faberge egg.

In an interview last year, Wolfe said about the series that he "wanted to tell the story of these people that had the items, and I actually wanted the item to have a voice, too, in some ways."

In that way, the show definitely succeeds, showing pieces of average American life and small-town locales in what coastal folks sometimes call "flyover country" that don't otherwise see television cameras all that often.

The show also provides insights into the bargaining techniques like the patented "ice breaker" (buying something funny and cheap but not very expensive as a way to gain trust from the seller) that any bargain hunter could appreciate.

It all results in some easy-to-watch television that's managed to become a cult hit across the country.

Watch the "American Pickers" talk about their favorite "picks":