I blame Michael Palin.
One of the earliest TV memories I have is of watching the great man himself adventuring across the globe, following in the footsteps of Phileas Fogg as he attempted to travel Around the World in 80 Days. Even as a child, the sense of adventure that Palin captured as he criss-crossed continents, encountered different cultures and relied on the kindness of strangers - and on a healthy dose of luck, too - on his epic journey.
In later years, I binged all of his travel series: Pole to Pole, Full Circle, Sahara, Himalaya, even North Korea. One of my greatest regrets is not travelling more in my twenties, but seeing lots of the world through the Monty Python man’s eyes softened the blow a little. Forget Alan Whicker: Palin is the David Attenborough of TV travel, and not just because of his avuncular nature.
I’ve always loved travel shows, even if they were mostly about package holidays being documented by Jill Dando (RIP) on Holiday or Judith Chalmers on Wish You Were Here…?. Those weekday, post-tea evening shows allowed a pre-internet glimpse into exotic locations; even now, I get misty-eyed evening hearing the music from the latter. I would even watch (unbeknownst to my mam and dad) ‘Ibiza Uncovered’ as a youngster, fascinated by the boozy and boorish exploits of Brits abroad in clubs like Manumission and Cream. Considering how I was well into my teens before I went on a foreign holiday, the racy Sky One show was literally a clandestine peek into a foreign land. TV chef Rick Stein’s various odysseys into exotic places and cultures, from Mexico to India, sated the same need, and I loved the various seasons of The Trip with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon as much for the travel aspect as for the comedy.
Of course, everything is different now. Not only has the advent of budget airlines made foreign travel infinitely more accessible, but you can literally pick a street in India, Australia or Chile and ‘walk’ down it, thanks to Google Street View.
All of which to say, this is what makes a programme like Race Across the World so joyful. The BBC show, now in its third season, captures the magic of travel and exploration via analogue methods in an increasingly digital world, where we can do anything, have anything, or solve any problem with a few taps of your phone screen. The premise: five teams of two people are set loose at Point A with the objective of getting to Point B by any means necessary - just not by plane. Their budget is the cost of a one-way plane ticket to the final destination, and they have no phone, credit cards or access to the internet. This year, the teams are traversing Canada; previous seasons have seen teams travel from London to Singapore and from Mexico to Argentina.
It’s far from a new concept; the US series The Amazing Race has been running since 2001 and adopts a very similar concept, after all - but as a show, it packs so much joy, pathos, excitement and nail-biting moments (kudos to its editors) into an hour, as well as some truly spectacular scenery and beautiful human stories that would restore your faith in humanity. Before Race Across the World, I’d never heard of the Haida Gwaii archipelago or the mind-blowingly beautiful Lake Louise; it is the sort of show to guzzle up greedily, take notes on and place pins on your mental map of the world. It’s my favourite thing on telly right now and I’ll be bereft when it’s over.
The recent return of Race Across the World for the first time since 2020 inspired me to dig out my Michael Palin DVDs once again and re-watch them. I finished Around the World in 80 Days in 24 hours, burned through his exploration of the Pacific Rim in Full Circle and gained a new perspective on our native continent in New Europe. Maybe someday I’ll have a chance to do a bit more travelling of my own, but for now they - and programmes like Race Across the World - allow me to live vicariously from the comfort of my sofa. It’s not perfect, but it’ll do for now.
