Move over, Traitors, the BBC has found its next big reality show: Destination X

Telegraph

2 days ago

If you were bundled into the back of a bus that had the windows blacked out and you were driven across Europe, with no means of communicating with the outside world, would you be able to figure out where you were? Even if you were given obscure clues along the way, and part of a group of 10 trying to come up with the right answer, it would be difficult, to say the least.
That is the premise of Destination X, the BBC's new glossy reality TV format. The programme is like a cross between Race Across the World, The Traitors, Hunted and Big Brother. Much of its action takes place on the specially-kitted out coach, ferrying the contestants across the continent. At the end of every episode, each player has two minutes to place an X on the map to mark where they think they are. The player whose guess is furthest away is eliminated; to keep the confusion levels high, the remaining players are not told whose was closest.
Rob Brydon, in his reality TV hosting debut, hams it up and chews the scenery throughout. There is more than a hint of Claudia Winkleman's performance in The Traitors in how Brydon does it, from the exaggerated campness to his slightly outré fashion choices – such as his choice of cravats and double-breasted blazers.
'I did look to Claudia,' he says. 'I love the lightness of touch there, I love the way she's a conduit into the show. I didn't want to get in the way of the programme, so I was very aware of that. I wanted to just be a bridge between the viewer and the contestants, because they are the stars. She gets the balance just right: mischievous at times, but always wanting them to have a great experience and to help them along.'
To get a taste of the experience, after a screening of the first episode at a cinema in Hoxton, east London, on one of the hottest days of the year a small group of journalists was invited to board the Destination X bus to play a truncated version of the game. As an added bonus, we got to keep quizzing Brydon and Dan Adamson, the show's executive producer, about the series.
The coach has been decked out with luxurious green velvet chairs and golden lights hanging on the walls. It feels a little like the Orient Express, or a posh private members' club. It is just a shame that the air conditioning does not seem to be working, and even a consummate professional like Brydon is struggling with the heat. 'Bloody hell, it's hot isn't it?' he asks before he decides to take off his blue suit jacket. 'Is it worth mentioning to the driver that the air conditioning is ineffectual? We are all sitting here like lobsters in a pot. Surely they must be able to make it work?' It only splutters to life in fits and starts over the course of the next hour.
As the bus drives off, the windows become frosted and we immediately become deprived of our sense of direction. I am pretty sure that we headed south to start with, but after a few turns it is almost impossible to know where we are.
Brydon, 60, says that he would like Destination X to be the kind of programme bringing generations to sit on the sofa together. 'I love that it's for the family,' he continues. 'We would watch Traitors in that way. You could persuade your teenage sons to spend time in your company, which is no mean feat. I'm proud of Would I Lie to You? being something you can watch with your family. I hope this becomes appointment viewing too. If you're anything like me as a parent, you are desperate for the stuff that can persuade them to spend time with you.'
The BBC has placed a big bet on Destination X and clearly thinks that the show is going to be its next reality big hit. Like The Traitors, it is a foreign import (Destination X was originally a Belgian format, while the same producers have also made an American version). No expense has been spared: quite apart from the £100,000 winner-takes-all prize, it was filmed across 32 days by a crew of 190 people who travelled more than 11,000km across Europe. As well as the decadent bus we see through most of the episode, there was a second coach following behind that was kitted out with beds for the contestants to sleep in.
'We had the opportunity to turn Europe into a board game. We immediately thought the way we bring scale to the challenges is we just get incredible locations,' says Adamson. 'We take over whole castles, we run a train on a public network, we take over cable car systems.'
Not that the combination of a large investment and huge ambition is any guarantee of success. 'You never know with any show – any theatre show, TV show, film, live show – how it's going to go,' says Brydon. 'You'd have to be detached from reality to not have your fingers crossed and hope that people respond to it.'
Taking 10 people across Europe in a confined space had some, erm, practical difficulties. 'We set ourselves a rule which gave ourselves one problem: no number twos on the bus,' says Adamson. 'It's about humanity, it's about being kind to each other. We had to create a system.' The system was this: a car pulled a trailer with portable lavatories on the back and, when nature called, the convoy had to find a place to pull over. The contestants getting off the bus had to put on blackout goggles and be chaperoned and walked over, before repeating the process in reverse after they had finished.
The contestants themselves were selected for their potential to be good at the game. Among them are Darren (a London taxi driver who took years learning The Knowledge and may be good at instinctively knowing where he is), crime writer Deborah (no stranger to piecing clues together) and Nick (an endurance athlete who has run a marathon in every country on earth and has seen much more of the world than most).
For all their abilities at sussing out which clues are helpful, they had bizarre strategies to try and help themselves. One tried to use the sun's arc to figure out in which direction they had travelled, while another counted the seconds that the bus drove in a tunnel to try and ascertain how big the mountain under which they were driving was. The helpfulness of that information is dubious. 'If I got out and saw the sun,' says Brydon, 'that would tell me it's daytime.' Adamson adds: 'It's amazing, when you take someone's senses away, how much they don't know where they are.'
Like the show's participants, we have to decide which clues are helpful and which ones are red herrings designed to throw us off the scent; but unlike the contestants, we are all feckless journalists. We are told that our destination is somewhere we all know and will recognise, and that there have been clues all around us since we boarded the bus. 'Film buffs will figure it out,' offers one producer. Seeing how puzzled we are, Brydon laughs and eats sweets picked up from the cinema. He slips into an impression of David Frost: 'The clues are there. As David Frost used to say, the clues are there.'
The bus windows defrost as we drive south over London Bridge; a few minutes later we are going back north over Tower Bridge. The frosted windows darken: are we going through a tunnel, or just driving down a road heavily lined with trees? We hear the chimes of Big Ben. Is that a clue? Westminster Bridge was, of course, the iconic setting for the start of 28 Days Later.
After what was actually an hour, but through a combination of the heat and sensory deprivation, felt like much more than that, we come to a stop and Brydon continues to play the role of avuncular host. 'I'm so sorry about the temperature. You shouldn't have had to suffer like that,' he says as he points at the sweat stains on his baby blue shirt. 'But look: I suffered too.'
As the Gavin & Stacey star departs, the eight of us remaining players are asked to do what the real contestants do and place an X on a map to guess where we are. It is surprisingly stressful, especially as I had not decided what I would do before I sat down in the Big Brother diary room-style area at the back of the bus.
Then comes my a-ha moment. I place my X and wait for the result. I was not the one with the worst guess, which in the show would mean I lived to fight another day. But as this is a one-time thing, we get told who was closest, and I am amazed to discover that I have won.
The windows of the bus defrosted for the final time and we had our answer. We were back where we had started, at the cinema.