The most exciting moment of Destination X is when someone breaks a fingernail

Telegraph

4 days ago

Destination X, BBC One's big new reality game show, is insane. I don't mean the content – it's actually quite dull. A bunch of contestants are driven around Europe on a coach with blacked-out windows, and must work out where they are with the help of some obscure clues. Advance notices bill it as a blend of Race Across the World and The Traitors, but both of those are great and this isn't.
No, I mean the facts and figures behind the show, which is based on a Belgian format. A crew of 190 people were sent on an 11,000km road trip around Europe for 32 days. According to the producers, this required the booking of nearly 7,000 hotel rooms. You read that right. The budget must be eye-watering. How much did it cost, and how much of that did the BBC put up (it is a co-production with US broadcaster NBC)? Of course, they won't tell you.
Anyway, all that money is being spent off-screen, not on it, despite what the trailer suggests. One of the main selling points of Race Across the World is seeing the wonderful locations. In Destination X, the viewer gets the occasional drone shot of the coach driving past a mountain. The contestants see almost nothing but the inside of the vehicle. Visually, it's not a patch on Treasure Hunt. And that had the added bonus of Anneka Rice in a jumpsuit.
The contestants meet at Baden-Baden airport, in a departure lounge populated by hammy actors, and are whisked off in helicopters. They are given headsets which act as blindfolds, flown around for an hour to disorientate them, then it's off on the coach – the branding unavoidably reminiscent of The X Factor – for the start of their adventure.
The tone is cheerful and cheesy. The hardest-working person involved in the production is Rob Brydon 's stylist. Brydon is the chuckling host, camping it up in a selection of blazers and cravats. He gently encourages the contestants to be a bit more Machiavellian, because that worked in The Traitors.
You could have guessed their personality types and occupations before the show began: a salt-of-the-earth cab driver, a retired female detective, an uber competitive man, a Gen Z content creator. Some of them are clever, some think they're clever, and some revel in having no general knowledge.
At the end of each episode, they each go alone into a room and place an 'X' on a virtual map, their best guess at where they are. Whoever chooses the destination furthest from the actual location gets eliminated. But a major flaw is that the contestants work as a group up to this point, which means not having a clue about geography isn't a hindrance to winning the £100,000 prize because you can just tag along with the others.
They stop off every now and again to be shown some 3-2-1-style clues. We are encouraged to play along at home, with a QR code provided. But it's unnecessarily convoluted. At one point they are made to stand in a box erected in a town square, while Brydon asks them questions about the country they're in, but they don't know the country they're in and aren't told whether their answers are right. Half of the clues they see are red herrings.
Playing along at home should get easier once we're an episode in and understand the way it works. It doesn't get more thrilling though. I jumped ahead to the opening of episode three, to find one contestant telling another that she broke a nail yesterday. There is plenty of chat about the onboard loo facilities. I find myself wondering how much Rob Brydon was paid for this.