A few things happening today:
- It’s the start of Race Across The World 2! 8pm, BBC2.
- Belgian Mole starts tonight! It will take a few days for the English subs to come through, but we will discuss it here.
We were sad to hear about the death of Tremendous Knowledge Dave Rainford from Eggheads yesterday. Here he was as a contestant on Bother’s Bar favourite Remote Control in 1991.
Well I really enjoyed Race Across the World again. The producers are weird geniuses, because my initial impressions of each pair at the start of the show were almost completely up-ended by the end. I really though I’d find the married couple the most annoying middle-class aspirationals going, but I honestly found their reasons for taking part compelling, and found them surprisingly efficient at getting places. Maybe it’s because I’m an annoying middle-class aspirational. I also love mother and son, and I hope he grows over the series as Darren did in the first series.
RATW series two is very good, two episodes in. Episode three, where the contestants try to cross the Darien Gap, should be quite something. Highly recommended.
Gutted for Shuntelle and Michael, thought they were a good team.
This remains very good indeed, not least because it is surprising by turns. I went off The Amazing Race somewhat when I heard its contestant producer describe it as a relationship show at heart, which was very much not what I wanted from it. By contrast, this almost effortlessly is a much more successful relationship show than The Amazing Race and its breakneck pace ever could be, not least because it lets the relationships flow instead of concentrating on just the disagreements. I liked the contestants in the first series, in different ways, but the casting of the second series is even better.
What an exciting conclusion! It did feel a bit gated in a way that other parts had not, but less so than The Amazing Race as a team with more cash (and a realistically achievable amount more cash) might have got a taxi to escape the crucial gate. The series left me feeling sad that it was all over in a way that only a few shows manage, which is high praise indeed. I feel like I would be happy to go on holiday with any of the teams, so tremendously well cast (series one was good to very good in this regard, series two was great) and great work all round.
I kind of hope they do show us at least some of Celebrity Race Halfway Across The World at some point, unexpected and anticlimactic conclusion and all, as a case study in When Adventure Shows Go Wrong and because whatever they have in the can is likely to be able to be edited into something still very good.