TV’S best reality show proves heaven has no smartphones
‘Who ever leaves home not knowing where they’re going?” says Stephen, 61, from Rutland. The answer in this case is “Stephen, 61, from Rutland” as he’s one of the contestants on the new series of Race Across the World
(BBC One). Presumably, Stephen soon found out where he was going when he saw “Japan” on his flight departure board, but hopefully he was delighted – both for the contestants and we viewers, Japan is the ideal jumping off point for this most excellent of reality challenges.
It’s ideal because Race Across the World always comes down to kindheartedness and goodwill, and the Japanese are specialists in both. The series, if you haven’t seen it, takes five pairs of Brits of all shapes and sizes and launches them on a 15,000km race, this time through eastern Asia. Only when they reach one checkpoint do they learn where the next one is, and they have £1,390 each (the equivalent cost of the air fare) to last them all the way to the finish, in this case way down in Lombok, Indonesia. Most importantly, they’re denuded of their smartphones at the start line. Think about it – no Google Translate, no Google Maps, no Apple Pay and no easy answers to overwhelming questions such as “when do I bow?”
The idea is that the couples – a selection of brothers and sisters, best friends (at the outset), retired couples, parents and children – navigate this unconnected hell and come to realise that it can also be heaven. Given our current qualms about pixelated ubiquity, it works superbly well. At its best RATW is a study of friendship, foibles, and how people need to learn to get along in the real world.
It is not, however, a format without faults. Series two, set in northern Canada, was frequently hacked by Canadians being far too nice and offering to drive contestants vast distances for no reward. Further, a couple could just copy exactly what another couple is doing, and then trip them up and run past them at the checkpoint (that’s what I’d do).
But any cracks like that are papered over here by the setting. Japan is a country both welcoming and forbidding, seemingly similar to the West and yet culturally worlds apart. It has a hefty language barrier and yet is also sensationally picturesque. I have booked my flight. But I will be taking my phone.
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hat does it say about Britain that there are enough people out there who have begun major building projects on their homes to warrant a scaremonger-slash sc had en freu de series like Renovation Rescue (Channel 4)? I’m not sure but reader, I’m one of them. I’ve done up a kitchen (or rather paid someone else to do it) and yes, everything always goes full fandango clustershambles.
It’s tempting to suggest that what you really need when a building project goes wrong is a good lawyer and an angry Liam Neeson as a friend to send Colin Cowboy “a message”. Failing that we could just have fair, workable regulations and enforceable contracts. But in the absence of all of the above we have Stacey “Sort Your Life Out” Solomon, who has turned TV presenting into a form of DIY – she can turn her hand to almost anything.
The idea behind Renovation Rescue is that when everything’s gone wrong on the way to creating your forever home, Solomon and her ninja builder “Aggie” (solo series incoming, surely) will fly in and show you how to make it right again. That means DIY, which in this first episode meant, inter alia, teaching Erick and Caroline how to plumb their own toilet.
The problem with DIY of course is that a lot of builder-y tasks are easy the second time you do them. But as we mostly have one home, we’ll only ever need to do them once. As a result, my house, for example, is a graveyard of jobs I’ve bodged trying to follow the Solomon credo of giving it a go. And then you have to pay someone else to ungive your go.
Still, if Renovation Rescue is founded on faulty logic, you can’t fault Solomon. She radiates positivity to the point where you almost forget that if you attempt to plumb in a toilet and you stuff it up, your house will be flooded with poo. She is so entertaining that even the segments where she works on her own home with her useless husband Joe Swash, which should be excruciating, are gently amusing.
Ultimately, Solomon rescues a series that is a bit of a fixer-upper: you’ve seen all of the materials that make up Renovation Rescue before, but you’ve never had a project manager like Stacey.
Race Across the World ★★★★ Stacey Solomon’s Renovation Rescue ★★★