My review of BBC's Destination X

Hi all, this is the draft for my most recent podcast which you can listen to by click on this link here - l am excited to discuss about another reality TV programme that's also from the UK and of the same genre: Destination X. Now for those of you who don't know, Destination X is a format that originated in Belgium back in 2023. Contestants are driven around Europe in a blacked out bus, so they have no idea where they are going but are let out at regular intervals to play games where they can win clues that will point them to where they are traveling to. Those who win loads of games will enjoy many clues that will make it easier for them to figure out where they are, those who don't have access to the clues are left floundering and you can't survive in this process without access to these clues. So you have to either be really good at winning all these games to get the clues or you have to be super nice and convince those who have the clues to share the information with you. Then at the end of each episode the contestants will have to place their X on a map of Europe and the player who places their X furthest away from their actual location would eliminated immediately. This process goes on until there are only two players left and there is a final showdown challenge, where the ultimate winner walks away with a handsome cash prize whilst everyone gets nothing. Naturally, this format favours those who are most well educated, well traveled, speak loads of European languages and most of all, those who can not only solve complex puzzles to earn those valuable clues but also manage the social game when living on the bus with the other contestants who are all rivals. The Destination X format has already been done in Belgium, Netherlands, France, Germany, Denmark, the US and the UK is the latest country to have adopted this format - but how does it compare to the other versions? I've just watched the first two episodes on the BBC and I'm probably part of a tiny number of hardcore fans who have watched every single episode from every single version of Destination X from every single country. I'm a huge fan of this format and am happy to see this on the BBC. 

Here's my take on the BBC UK Destination X - let's start with the positives before I start criticizing. I like it, I think it is one of the better versions. In sharp contrast to the US version, the producers don't tell the viewers where the Destination X is for each episode, we can guess along on the BBC website and it's never that obvious. It's as hard as some of the most difficult European versions out there and whilst the US version feels incredibly dumbed down for an audience who have never ever set foot in Europe, the UK version is quite the opposite with cryptic clues that you have to work hard to figure out. A good example of this was the clue involving letters on the sail on the boat in the second episode - we see the letters F, D, A, FL, I around a question mark. This was a clue that showed the players that they were in Switzerland, by showing the countries surrounding Switzerland but the letters weren't even the first letter of the countries in English or their native language, no it was the letter on the vehicle registration plates of the countries. So F stands for France, D stands for Deutschland, A stands for Austria (yup, instead of an Ö for Österreich), I stands for Italy/Italia and FL was the one that got me. It stands for Fürstentum Liechtenstein - now I speak German quite well, I have even been to Liechtenstein. Yet I just couldn't remember what car number plates in Liechtenstein looked like even if I knew the word Fürstentum (which means Principality) in German. So fair play to the producers who raising the stakes in the BBC version but come on, that was next level difficult. The clues so far are never straightforward, they are usually a puzzle you need to solve based on prior knowledge of these countries and if you're clueless about the countries' geography, history, culture and languages, those clues are worthless to you. It feels like the UK has created a far more intellectual programme pitched at a different audience whereas the US version has been hopelessly dumbed down to the point where true fans of the format will be offended. The host Rob Brydon is actually pretty good, he's a big character, he's a Welsh comedian who is pretty well known here but he isn't too full of himself. He is funny without wearing his welcome thin. I am hard to please in that department, I really didn't like the Belgium S2, Denmark and American hosts at all. They were all awful in their own ways. But we are here to talk about the BBC version of Destination X, so I'll stick to the topic. 

But here's where S1 of Destination X UK has really messed up badly: if you're going to make the game that intellectual and difficult, then you need to a really good cast who are super intelligent and can figure out these really cryptic clues - there are TV programmes in the UK which are focused on solving puzzles for really smart people (University Challenge, Only Connect and Eggheads come to mind). For such programmes, yeah you have to cast people with PhDs to show off just how incredibly smart they are compared to your average folks. We also have day time television programmes where the questions are a lot easier and these quiz shows are aimed more at "ordinary" or "average" folks - therein lies the problem. We have difficult cryptic puzzles which are totally lost on a very average cast who often struggle to make sense of these puzzles. In E1, Deborah won a vital clue and whilst it was staring at her right in the face, she had no idea what it meant as she simply didn't have the intellect to make sense of it. What did she expect? For the producers to tell her exactly where to place her X? No, of course she had to earn it by solving a puzzle! So despite being given the clue, she was eliminated in that first episode. Oh dear, that was painful to watch, which suggests a problem with the casting. There is a huge mismatch between the level of difficulty of the games and the cast - the games are aimed at really smart people who are able to solve difficult puzzles, the cast are more a mish-mash of people across British society which includes some people who are quite well educated but also people who are never ever going to survive long in this process as they are clueless and poorly prepared for such a difficult game. This is a challenge of course, because you would want the casting to take diversity seriously and have a diverse cast but still, even if you go to Oxford and Cambridge, you will be able to find students there who are working class, LGBTQ, of ethnic minorities and disabled. Such a format would only really work well if we had a cast of really strong players who come into the process ready to outperform everyone else, instead we have a mishmash of folks who represent different aspects of British society and I shake my head at that because I can immediately identify the ones who will not last long at all in such a difficult process. 

Allow me to compare this to the Olympics - there is a strict qualification process to earn a berth at the Olympics and such rules are in place to ensure that only athletes of a minimum professional standard get to compete at the Olympics, so you will not have a repeat of the Eric the Eel episode. That was when the swimmer Eric Moussambani from Equatorial Guinea was given a wildcard to compete at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Such wildcards are given out to encourage countries who aren't powerhouses in the sport to compete at the Olympics but it turned out to be a laughing stock as this swimmer was so poor prepared he really struggled to complete the 100m swim. We don't want to see people struggling to swim at the Olympics, that makes a mockery of the whole process! No, we want to see the very best of the best pushing the limits of what the human body can do, breaking world records at the Olympics. I'm seeing quite a few Eric the Eels in this season, there was a 22 year old guy Mahdi who was so overwhelmed by the first day on the bus that he realized, oh dear there is just no way I am going to win this, it's way harder than I thought - he quit the game first thing on the second day. That made me angry with the casting team - why did they set up Mahdi to fail like that when there are literally thousands of other applicants who would give an arm and a leg to take part in Destination X? Why was such a weak player given the chance to take part in the first place? That was a huge mistake, a bad casting decision. So overall, the production is pretty solid from what I have seen so far, but the season is let down by a cast team that cared more about diversity rather than picking quality candidates. Yes you can represent a minority and still be super intelligent at the same time y'know? I think it can really backfire if they cast someone from a certain minority but this person performs badly, then they're not being a good ambassador for their community. So in Destination X, there is a gay contestant James but he isn't a strong player and so I find myself subconscious distancing myself from him rather than liking him, despite the fact that I am a gay viewer. I'm a reality TV fan and I would support contestants who have proven that they are a force to be reckoned with in this process. I'm very objective like that and I'd like to think that the casting team who are responsible for a big budget BBC production would understand their viewers a lot better than this but clearly, I know how to do their job a lot better than them as they had clearly made a very stupid mistake with the casting. 

Lastly, another aspect of the BBC version of Destination X I really didn't like was how the contestants seem to think that they needed to build trust and move forwards as a team - they have forgotten that it is a ruthless game where one person will be eliminated each round and only the winner goes home with the cash prize, everyone else is a loser who leaves with absolutely nothing. So you have to do whatever you need to do to stay in the process, now you can play nice, or you can be ruthless but you're never going to help another player along in the process because the nature of the game is such that you can't win as a team in this game. You're not on a road trip where you make friends, build friendships and then go home as new besties at the end of the process - I am not suggesting that it has to be as ruthless as Squid Game but there seems to be a lack of awareness of the rules of the game on the part of some of these players. I roll my eyes and think, do you even know what you've signed up for? Surely they have explained the rules to you? So did the casting team for BBC's Destination X do the complete opposite by deliberately casting people who didn't like this kind of backstabbing behaviour? Why are some players so clueless about the rules of the game? By that token, I'm going to pick my two finalists: Nick and Judith. They seem to be the only two players who understand the rules of the game and of the calibre to make sense of the difficult puzzles they have to solve when given the clues. The rest of the cast are just weak players I'm afraid and it is a real shame - the production team have done a good job by putting together a really difficult season but S1 has been let down by the awful casting. Let's see if I am proven wrong about a final showdown between Nick and Judith. What do you think? Have I been too harsh on the cast of this season? There will be two episodes of Destination X on the BBC a week now and thank you very much for reading.