Exploring the world of New York City's tunnel workers

History Channel's "Sandhogs" (10 p.m. EDT Sunday) marks another entry in the Tough Guy TV genre popularized by Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch" and History's "Ice Road Truckers," but it began life as a two-hour documentary three years ago.

That's when executive producer Eddie Rosenstein began exploring the possibility of making a program about the so-called sandhogs, workers who dig tunnels for water and mass transit beneath New York City.

Rosenstein said his pitch to History Channel executives was simple: It's living history to watch the sandhogs work, the modern-day equivalent of seeing the pyramids being built.

"Being a Western Pennsylvania boy, I was aware of miners and mining camps and the notion of those in New York City caught my imagination," Rosenstein said by phone this week. "I kept my eye on it for years and I was just finishing up another project and thinking about what I would like to do. I started to wonder if anybody had done anything on these guys, the sandhogs."

No one had, and for good reason. The sandhogs have worked their dangerous jobs since 1882 and are estimated to have lost one man for every mile of tunnel completed. It's a closed community of union members numbering fewer than 1,000.

"They hand down their skills and their union membership from generation to generation," said Rosenstein. "Outsiders weren't very welcome."

To gain the trust of the sandhogs, Rosenstein went to work underground as one of them.

"I've never had a tougher job in my life," he said. "But I think I made more money in one year as a sandhog than as a filmmaker."

Eventually, they allowed him to film their work. History Channel executives, intrigued by what they saw, partnered Rosenstein's Eyepop Productions with the veteran reality-TV makers at Pilgrim Films and commissioned a series. Rosenstein's two-hour documentary will air as the concluding installment of the show's first season.

Projects featured in "Sandhogs" include the construction of the city's third water tunnel, which began in 1970 and is expected to be complete in 2013, and an extension to a subway line.

Regular characters include Ireland native Morgan Curran, 57, whose specialty is dynamite and blasting. In Sunday night's premiere, he's perplexed when one set of explosives fails to detonate.

Rosenstein said "Sandhogs" is not just a "classic tough guys working in filthy jobs" show, because it also documents "one of the most incredible pieces of urban planning in the history of the world." But he said the work ethic of the sandhogs will connect with viewers.

"I think people do like seeing people who work real hard," he said. "America traditionally does exalt the hard worker, but somehow or other in the last 10 years or so we've begun to champion the people who work the least and get paid the most. But I think in our hearts, America does like people who put in a hard day's work for an honest wage."

(TV editor Rob Owen can be reached at rowen(at)post-gazette.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)