These are the traitors on a bus! It’s breed worldwide in blindfolds! This is the new series of BBC reality competition, destination X!
The premise is simple. A dozen baker’s tournaments gather at the Baden-Baden Airport in Germany, from which they were brought by helicopter and a luxuriously designated coach with blackened-out windows in a variety of mysterious locations in Europe-a stage-part-sharing route challenges to earn hints to help them work where they are. At the end of each stage, the contests enter the “map room” and indicate where they think it is by placing an X. The person at least accurately thrown under the bus. The general winner is a net of £ 100,000.
The US version of Jeffrey Dean Morgan-a restless choice for us to associate with him inadvertently with his extremely violent character in The Walking Dead, but the Americans probably felt the need to protect as they ventured into European wilds in a way that, even the post-Brexit, the British didn’t. Whatever the reason, we went for a warmer, less armed-to-a-barbed-wire-wrapped-baseball-bat approach and gave the gig to Rob Brydon, in a set of suited suits. “I’m really Anton du Beke,” he joked.
The contests are carefully thrown away as usual. We have a sweet, unlucky contingent-priority with them 23-year-old James, who is on vacation once without his mother and dad and who describes himself, on this journey in deep geography knowledge and cultural understanding, as “not the best traveler”. We have emotional-first brigade, led by Poor Deborah, a crime author consumed by guilt and self-borne when he is required to tell a white lie in chasing a competitive advantage. Then there are terrible competitors, such as endurance athlete Nick, who is the first person who ran a marathon in every country in the world and fibrillates with energy and ambition (“I will not let a child win something, no”), and Surf School director Ben, hidden his tendencies a little better under a bonhomous Mien and a little better under a bonhomous Mien Blond hair shock. But we see you, Ben. This is not our first rodeo.
The credit is where it should be, though – it’s Ben looking at the small bathroom in their coach and suggesting they make it a rule that everyone will sit “for everyone”. Ben has four children.
As in today de Rigueur in the reality competition series, a good chunk of cohort does not make it pass in the initial phase. Three out of 13 failed the first challenge and did not do so by leaving the room. The remaining 10 resumes a disorienting 125 mile of helicopter ride, in which Judith, a 28-year-old nuclear engineer, records that they are flying backwards with the sun to their right and therefore maybe south. Dawn needs to get rid of her baby’s atlas before she sets her to be given an edge.
The challenges and rewards are, of course, set up in the SOW division, which requires alliances and treachery as the journey opens (“I think my competitiveness will relieve me,” Nick said). This needs to be enough to keep viewers watch, as the challenges are confused. At one point, tournaments found themselves in a cubicle with a picture line in the middle of an unknown Square market “border of the two countries and influenced by all three” and must answer many questions to earn the right to peek into one of the two windows; One provides a sign of their location and the other is a red herring, with no way of understanding which one. An additional clue will be presented to the participant who has given the most answers – even though we do not know what they are – which is then allowed to tell another person what it is. Are we in Vienna? O Amsterdam? It becomes slightly hallucinatory and I really don’t know what’s going on.
Viewers are invited to play with QR codes and place their own xs in a virtual map room. This is more participating in my little screen hobby than I wanted to do. But it is if that’s what floats in your boat – it’s possible to get off a Dutch canal. Also, where do they speak Flemish, because local people sound unusual here, but street signs are in French, despite having a café Mozart – what gives?
The destination X does not close like a vice around you in the way of traitors, or it has an aspect of racial heating worldwide worldwide. But it’s fun to go along with the ride.
