It’s The Traitors on a bus! It’s Race Across the World in blindfolds! It’s the BBC’s new reality competition series, Destination X!
The premise is simple. A baker’s dozen of contestants assemble at Baden-Baden airport in Germany, from where they are transported via helicopter and a luxuriously appointed coach with blacked-out windows to various mysterious locations in Europe – one an episode – taking part in challenges en route to earn clues to help them work out where they are. At the end of each episode, the contestants enter the “map room” and indicate where they think they are by placing an X. The person who is least accurate is thrown under the bus. The overall winner will net £100,000.
The US version is presented by Jeffrey Dean Morgan – an unsettling choice for those of us who associate him inextricably with his grotesquely violent character in The Walking Dead, but perhaps Americans feel the need to be protected as they venture into the wilds of Europe in a way that, even post-Brexit, Britons do not. Whatever the reason, we have gone for a warmer, less armed-with-a-barbed-wire-wrapped-baseball-bat approach and given the gig to Rob Brydon, in an array of natty suits. “I’m actually Anton Du Beke,” he jokes.
The contestants are as carefully cast as ever. We have the sweet, hapless contingent – foremost among them 23-year-old James, who has been on holiday only once without his mum and dad and who describes himself, on this voyage predicated on deep geographical knowledge and cultural inference, as “not the best traveller”. We have the feelings-first brigade, led by poor Deborah, a crime author who is consumed by guilt and self-loathing when she is required to tell a white lie in pursuit of a competitive advantage. Then there are the terrifyingly competitive types, such as the endurance athlete Nick, who was the first person to run a marathon in every country in the world and fibrillates with energy and ambition (“I wouldn’t let a child win something, no”), and the surf school director Ben, hiding his tendencies a bit better under a bonhomous mien and a shock of blond hair. But we see you, Ben. This isn’t our first rodeo.
Credit where it’s due, though – it’s Ben who takes one look at the tiny toilet on their coach and suggests they make it a rule that everyone has to sit down “for everything”. Ben has four children.
The ‘carefully cast’ contestants … Destination X. Photograph: BBC/TwoFour
As is now de rigueur in reality competition series, a good chunk of the cohort do not make it past the preliminary stage. Three of the 13 fail the first challenge and don’t even make it out of the departure lounge. The remaining 10 go on a disorienting 125-mile helicopter ride, during which Judith, a 28-year-old nuclear engineer, notes that they are flying backwards with the sun to their right and therefore probably southwards. Dawn reckons that flicking through her toddler’s atlas before she set out is likely to have given her the edge.
The challenges and rewards are, of course, set up to sow division, requiring alliances and betrayals as the journey unfolds (“I think my competitiveness will alienate me,” says Nick). This will have to be enough to keep viewers watching, because the challenges are baffling. At one point, the contestants find themselves in a picture-lined cubicle in the middle of an unknown market square “bordered by two countries and influenced by all three” and must answer multipart questions to earn the right to peek out of one of two windows; one gives a clue to their location and the other is a red herring, with no way of discerning which is which. A further clue will be presented to the participant who has given the most right answers – although we don’t know what they are – who is then allowed to tell one other person what it is. Are we in Vienna? Or Amsterdam? It becomes slightly hallucinatory and I truly do not know what is going on.
Viewers are invited to play along via QR codes and place their own Xs in a virtual map room. This is more involvement in my small-screen entertainment than I like to undertake. But have at it if that’s what floats your boat – possibly down a Dutch canal. Also, where do they speak Flemish, because the local people sound very unusual here, but the street signs are in French, despite there being a Café Mozart – what gives?
Destination X does not close like a vice around you in the manner of The Traitors, nor does it have the cockle-warming aspect of Race Across the World. But it’s fun to go along for the ride.
Destination X aired on BBC One and is available on BBC iPlayer