Wednesday and Thursdays, 9pm,
BBC1 and iPlayer
I mean I think I’ve made my opinions on Destination X as a format perfectly clear by now (i.e. it’s OK but not worthy of the massive hype – and price – it’s been afforded), ultimately its fundamental mystery is not that interesting and it can’t really use its location as a player as that would give the game away so you’re kind of left with a lot of generic challenges of varying quality that could be done anywhere but different to the original is that evidently we’ve got Rob Brydon on location administering tasks rather than at a location and communicating via screen. Whether this is enough of a secret sauce to make its fortunes differ from its many international versions remains to be seen.
But hey! It’s not about what I think, let us know what you thought in the comments.
The thing is, so far most viewers of various versions of Destination X agree with you BB.
I think the first episode does a terrible job of onboarding really – they’re in an airport, and some get eliminated (spoiler, they’re almost certainly coming back), and then they do quite a boring challenge in a box, and then they drive 500 km, and then there’s a nothingy bit of business with a clue, and then you’re expected to know where you are. It’s not really Geoguesser: the reality show, at least the original had a playfulness to it and actually gives away its big hint at its location, you might as well have done the challenge in a studio for all it really mattered. Similarly to the original at no point did I actually care where they were or indeed where they were going, but at least you could claim it was interestingly made. IF you were expecting Race Across The World meets The Traitors, well you aren’t getting it.
Visually it’s been edited nicely, aurally it’s been done in the US style (i.e. the background music is loud and overbearing and constant). I thought Rob Brydon would be adding more to this than it turns out he is – not really the secret sauce.
So I was quite prepared to write this off after episode one, but we put episode two on iPlayer and was surprised to enjoy it quite a lot more – the challenges were a bit more mischevious and action-packed but the clues were way more obvious – again as suggested would happen there’s no real misdirection it’s just a generic challenge show, but at least the big challenge was pretty good.
So… I don’t know, if people watched ep1 and gave up on it I wouldn’t be surprised, and Thursday overnight is meaningless really as it won’t count anyone who watched ep 2 early on iPlayer, so much like the contestants I’m shooting into the dark. I’ll put my X at a low 2m overnight for Wednesday, but we’re probably not going to get a proper measure of how well it’s doing for a while.
2.8m for launch, they’ll be happy with that.
Would only expect it to go down. Really was poor – one of the worst debut reality TV episodes I’ve ever seen and just boring. A travel gameshow doesn’t work on TV if they can’t present the destination to viewers – we learn more about the world in Where is Kazakhstan.
Also annoying the BBC throw a £100k prize at this but Race Across the World is stuck on £20k.
Well it’s taken me until the end of episode 2 to realise that the clues they get are clues to where they’re going to end up, not to where they currently are! The show ought to make that clearer, I think.
But then that doesn’t make sense with the German shepherd clue, which was meant to be a clue to Alsace, as the eventual destination was Paris, nowhere near Alscace.
So it’s a muddled mixture of clues.
2.1m ep 2, with the caveat that there will be pre-broadcast to add to that figure. An expected dip but not yet a collapse.
Interesting to read accounts that suggest when it airs in double bills with Masterchef from next week that Masterchef may have been the less problematic of the two shows to work on.
We’re discussing some of the clues that didn’t quite work on the Discord and I’m finding myself patronisingly saying “I’m sure it was very clever though” almost reflexively, which I’m not sure is actually a good thing.
Enjoyed this a lot more than I was expecting after E1 – it has the right mix of gameplay, gameplay, laughs (which is what Traitors S1/S2 got right and Survivor got wrong). “… is it Dave’s Coaches?”
The one negative that I have about this is that the format appears to fall between two stools: is it a guessing game for us, or a strategic game show for the contestants? I was often too busy guessing the location to watch the drama within the game or vice versa, and too often felt like I was missing things on both sides.
Although I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong about the location of the first coach stop, it could have been made clearer that the clues are for both their current location and for the Destination X.
That said, I will keep watching: numbers and reviews aren’t great, but it’s not quite a flop just yet. Solid 8/10 – any fault so far is from a dodgy format rather than a mess-up from producers.
I wanted to like it, and I love GeoGuesser, but I gave up after Ep 1. The clues felt like they should have been presented by Dusty Bin.
I think is quite interesting is that they’ve replaced the sort of playful “is this clue actually here or planted?” more Geoguessr-y feel of the original with a “these are clues that may or may not help you playalong with that will lead you to a solution” 3-2-1 based set-up, which has possibly solved some issues but have thrown up a load of new issues of their own.
2.1 overnight ep 3. Still above 2m, but it’s lost 30% in a week.
I thought that was quite impressive retention, it lost quite a few between episode 1 and 2 but was stable between 2 and 3, so those who stuck with it are seemingly still doing so.
I’m sticking with it, despite its flaws. One bit that really made me chuckle was the discussion who they were saving before the challenge, with Saskia saying “I’d really like to save James” and James saying “I’m sure they’ll save me” followed by an immediate cut, after what seemed like a millisecond of discussion, to Josh saying “yeah, we’re saving Daren”. The abrupt nature of the whole thing really made me laugh, brilliant editing.
Bit surprised that it was only episode 3 and they had contrived to only have two women in the game.
Like everywhere else, what’s likely to kill it is the cost for the viewers it gets, which would be fine if it wasn’t the best part of a million quid an episode.
Really struggled with ep 3, after the glimmer of hope of episode 2. I’m just really really struggling to give a damn about these people and the challenges were dull.
I’m sticking with it out of obligation than enjoyment this point but a viewer is a viewer.
I’m hooked. I will wait to catch up on Fortsy Hotes (apparently that is the nickname) after DestyX.
This is entirely my kind of game show – a massive guessing game across Europe? As a languages geek and geography fan, they’re spoiling me… but practically nobody else.
Seems a bit more interesting now – more strategy involved as contestants (seemingly except from Claire) have worked out that clues are not meant to be shared. It’s a grower: certainly will only be one series, but it’s been a fun series so far.
1.8m Episode 4 overnight (just) – and no early iPlayer to bolster the numbers. It’s just following its international trend really.
If it adds x0.5 in catch-up it’ll be under 3m by this point, and that’s assuming it does.
Week 1 finals: 4.35m launch, 3.36m ep 2, and we can deduce from Thinkbox that about a quarter mill watched ep 2 after ep 1.
So it looks like it’s going to be under 3m certainly for ep 4, possibly ep 3 we’ll have to see.
1.8m overnight ep 5, slightly up on last Thursday, but that’s still rounding up.
Edit: A soft 2.0m on Thursday. A surge!
Week 2 finals: 3.30 (ep 3), 2.75m (ep 4).
Overnights this week: Ep 7 2.1m, Ep 8 1.9m. So 2m seems to be about the level.
Week 3 finals: 2.98 (ep 5), 3.07 (ep 6)
This just ended up being quite an annoying watch really, I wouldn’t say I hatewatched it, but I felt like I was getting dragged along out of obligation.
When everyone blindly parroted “It’s like The Traitors meets Race Across The World!!!” I have now come to realise they meant the bit in The Traitors where they were in the minivan going to and from challenges and the bit in Race Across The World where they want to murder each other.
Half of each episode was set on the bus with a group of people I can’t really say I feel the need to hang out with, not much fun chat, tedious “will they/won’t they share the clue” – we’re not the US, these shows need laughs. Challenges were, as they ever were, mid-tier Mole stuff and I found especially towards the end the “ooh aren’t we *clever*” clues silly – either coming after they’ve placed their X so pointless, or in the finale if they had the foresight to work out the Spanish Steps it wouldn’t have mattered because they’d still have to jump through the hoops anyway, so pointless. Also there was a colour maths puzzle in episode nine which seemed to be the same puzzle for both teams but with same but different colours – how were you meant to discuss that at home?
Ultimately changing the set-up from the more Geoguessr-with-red-herrings from the Belgian original to 3-2-1-with-red-herrings here solves some problems but comes with more of its own – namely why are we bothering spending a million pounds an episode when you could have just pretended you’re on a bus at Elstree, dropped in some drone shots of some European locations (mainly French and Italian) and just played Kerplunk or whatever to earn a cryptic hint at whatever (mainly French or Italian) location the producers were thinking of? You’d have pretty much exactly the same show for way less hassle.
I think TwoFour did about as good a job with the format as they could have done – maybe turn down the music a bit next time – I just don’t think it’s a very good format. I thought the episodes on the Matterhorn, Vienna and the Final in Rome at least tried to look interesting (the final episode being the least Desty X of the lot really). I thought Rob Brydon was good. I don’t know how you make the format better really.
2.2 and 2.5 final week overnights.
I couldn’t get past the first episode and don’t feel I missed out. From the snippets I’ve picked up sounds like they tried to make it a show it wasn’t and like so many new reality shows of recent years they throw too many ‘twists” into a first series when the show hasn’t established it’s core format yet. That usually suggests the core format isn’t that strong.
Did the winner get the full £100k? Whilst Race Across the World is about the journey rather than the prize it feels like if new shows are getting a £100k jackpot their highest rated show at least deserves a bump up to £50k.
Yes the winner got 100k.
Saying “they did the best they could” feels not much of a compliment, but this was a poor format well-executed. It had the routine of game-game-laughs rather than game-game-game that The Traitors gets right, rather than Survivor’s game-game-game.
Rob Brydon was a surprisingly competent host – knew the game and how to wring laughs from a strategy-heavy format. Clues were on the easy side but for the first series that felt forgivable; it’s a 9pm BBC1 show, not Genius Game.
What was wrong? The possibility of an unfair result seemed to hang over the series until right at the end, plus some… questionable guesswork in the Map Room (“I’m thinking Paris, but it’s too hot… we must be in the south of France, maybe Monaco”). Casting also was a misfire: 13 contestants from whom it was difficult to find anyone to root for.
The good point: the Venice episode had interesting minigames; the route was not easily guessable and the clues weren’t quite 3-2-1 level. Most of all, Destination X understood that British reality audiences like to see fair play rewarded and deception punished: the winner was the clearly uncomfortable one in a successful plan to eliminate a player by giving wrong information earlier in the series, and the others involved… let’s just say Jackie P won’t be getting her kitchen yet.
Hearing reports of a recommission does not fill me with confidence. The Traitors tries to gloss over a format full of holes with engaging casting and Claudia Winkleman. Destination X has the same problem and it is more obvious here that it has only half-worked out how to do that. 7/10
With the NEW BARB +7 Kitchen Sink (aggregated – i.e. including all the repeats, pre and post watching) Ratings, Destination X looks like this:
Ep 1: 5.31m
Ep 2: 3.94m
Ep 3: 4.04m
Ep 4: 3.30m
Ep 5: 3.71m
Ep 6: 3.57m
Ep 7: 3.85m
Ep 8: 3.62m
Ep 9: 3.89m
Ep 10: 4.01m.
But now we also have some +28s! I will edit this as they come in.
Ep 1: 6.65m
Ep 2: 5.21m
Ep 3: 5.06m
Ep 4: 4.50m
Ep 5: 4.61m
Ep 6: 4.49m
Ep 7: 4.54m
Ep 8: 4.36m
Ep 9: 4.43m
Ep 10: 4.53m
I’ll say something for Destination X… it was consistent.