Destination X Review (Spoilers)

Should we talk about the BBC’s Destination X? Of course we should. But it’s not a quiz? So what, it’s my ball and we play by my rules.

Okay, so it’s been inaccurately described as The Traitors v. Race Across the World. I will come to what’s so inaccurate about this a bit later. Now, I love both of these shows and if you’re familiar with both of them you’ll be aware that these are very different shows. Now, the danger of trying of combine the appeal of two very different shows is that you end up falling between two stools and when you fall between two stools you often just fall.

To briefly summarise what the show seems to be about, 13 contestants met in what looked to be a very small and rather fake departure lounge in Baden Baden airport. This was narrowed down to 10 contestants, who were helicoptered away to where 2 buses with windows (temporarily) blacked out– one for the day and one for the night awaited. On each show they were taken to a well-known European destination. On the way there were stops for clues. At the climax of each show, each remaining contestant had to put their x on a high-tech interactive map to mark where they believed they were. The one who was furthest away was unceremoniously ejected.

Does that sound in any way similar to The Traitors to you? There’s no voting, for one thing. Yes, the contestants don’t all get all of the clues, and so they can be sneaky about what they reveal to each other, but it’s all very tame considering how much the promotion for the show has been pushing this angle. As for Race Across the World? Well, both shows see people travelling a lot. That’s about it. In Race Around the World we do at least get a glimpse of the life and culture of the places being visited. There are chances for us to vicariously stop and smell the roses a little. Alright, to be fair we did get to see a little more scenery in episode 2, but there’s only so much they can show you without losing the play along at homeability. And in Race Across the World, an integral factor is players negotiating hurdles with transport. In Destination X, the transport is all laid on.

So, if you choose to watch because you’ve bought the hype about its similarity to those shows you may well be disappointed. Watch it with an open mind and judge it on its own merits and you may find, as I did, that you give it a cautious approval. The first two episodes did enough to make we want to watch episode 3 this coming week. You know me, I’m a bit of a misanthrope but for all that I do find some of the personalities on board to be quite interesting. Having said that, I could do without Nick – the one who has run a marathon in every country on Earth – continually being dragged into the diary room to tell us he is prepared to be ruthless when it is necessary.  Rob Brydon is a good old Baglan (area of Port Talbot) boy, so he will get no criticism from me and he does the job of presenting the show perfectly well. I think he realises that this is not The Rob Brydon show and that a relatively understated approach works.

It all comes down to the game play, though, and I felt that episode 2 did this better than episode 1. The destination of Episode 1 was Paris. I was pretty much certain it would be so after Mr. Brydon said that the destination was one of the first cities in Europe to be electrically lit. Then he gave us a list of European cities with copies of the Statue of Liberty and didn’t mention Paris. Admittedly there was a strange interlude in Alsace Lorraine, where, amongst some red herrings the contestants were given some clues that belonged in Sybil Fawlty’s Mastermind round on the Bleedin’ Obvious while others would not have been out of place amongst the prize clues in 3-2-1 (ask your grandparents).

I enjoyed the second episode more especially the set piece where the contestants were separated into two teams, put in cable cars which stopped at the same point, high above the ground, and then told to carry out activities to earn a clue. That was fun. Mind you, the big clue that the winning team earned couldn’t have made it a lot more obvious that we were going to the Matterhorn. I mean, it wasn’t quite the full Alpen box, but even so. Mind you, only Marathon Nick seemed to understand it.

Well, as I said there was enough to make me want to give it another go for episode 3. I have to say, though, normally when I like a reality game show, I’d like to play in it myself. In the last 9 years or so I’ve visited over 20 European countries. I love travel, and the idea of travelling all around Europe – and never seeing hardly ANY of it! – is something which just seems wrong.

A Question of Genius

Come on, admit it, did you watch Genius Game? Well, I will admit that I watched it on catch up. This was partly because I was watching the tried and tested Race Around the World at the same time it was broadcast and partly because I must have been out when the phone call came sounding me out if I’d be interested in it.

And interested in it I was. Note the use of the past tense. Back in 2023 I commented on how unusual it seemed that Channel 5 would host a relatively intellectual game show like Puzzling. Sadly it hasn’t returned since that first series. Well, Primetime Wednesday night on ITV1 seems a pretty unlikely slot as well.

Research since watching the first episode shows me that this is a UK version of a hit show from South Korea. Ah. Now, if I said fill in the blank - hit show from South Korea , Blank Game – then I think most of us would fill in the blank with the word Squid. Well, this is really nothing like Squid Game, which is probably just as well. I’m not up for all that gore and violence, I get enough of that at home. I wasn’t aware of the South Korean original until after I watched the first ITV show on catch up, so I don’t know how the UK version compares with it. So let’s stick just to the UK show.

When I wrote my review of Chess Masters: The Endgame a few days ago, I made the point that I didn’t really understand who the show was made for. What’s more, I don’t think that the production team had a very clear idea of their audience either. Well, I’ve watched two episodes of “Genius Game” and I find myself asking the question – who is supposed to get what out of watching this?

So, let’s try to unravel this. It’s called “The Genius Game”. Well, we’ve had quiz game shows before that have been based on the idea of finding out who has the highest intelligence rather than who knows the most. They varied in quality but none of them ever quite proved to be the full package. After all, we most of us think we know what intelligence is, but how do you measure it? In fact, which types of intelligence do you actually measure? (Yes, I know that I took the Mensa IQ tests a few years ago, but that was a) because I wanted to play in Brain of Mensa – and b) sheer curiosity as to whether I’d get in or not. But it doesn’t alter the fact that the one thing that you can say that IQ tests are really good for is testing how well you can answer the questions in IQ tests.) As for the concept of genius, though. Well, let’s accept that Genius Game is a snappier title than -Honestly these people are really smart Game. -

 So presumably the contestants are all people with demonstrably super-high ’intelligence’. Alright, I’ve no reason to question that. So what’s the point? Why, to be the last person standing at the end of the series. OK, got it. So what happens if you are the last person left? Well, erm, you know I’m not really sure. They may have mentioned what the prize is, but my attention must have been flagging if they did. Why would my attention have been flagging? Because, and I’m sorry to upset anyone who enjoyed the show and this is just my personal opinion, but I did not find it terribly interesting.

The game mechanics, if I understood correctly are:- in each show there is a main game. This will be one where the geniuses/ genii (I dream of genii?) have to form alliances and manipulate others to win a task. The overall winner(s) of the main task are exempt from the ‘death match’ (elimination task). The overall loser of the main task is one of the contestants of the death match, and they choose their opponent from the other non-winners. Then the two go head to head in a game testing intelligence, skill and strategy. Winner stays on, loser goes home.

In essence, then, what we have is a curious hybrid – and we know how often curious hybrids work on TV, don’t we? On the one hand it’s a puzzle based show – not totally unlike the Mental games of the Crystal Maze. On the other hand it’s a game of manipulation, mistrust and betrayal, and it seems that it’s rather obviously trying to cash in on the Traitors zeitgeist. Now, I loved The Crystal Maze and I loved the Traitors. Sorry, but I don’t like Genius Game very much so far.

You’d like me to tell you why not? Oh, try and stop me! Producers – as a puzzle game I have to ask – where’s the play at home factor? D’oh! Just as Chess Masters never really gave us enough time to work anything out for ourselves, the games we saw had very little play at home potential. Even the death matches were intercut with scenes of the other contestants giving the answers as they watched.

As for the Traitors, well I can easily tell you why this just cannot be as popular. I’m not saying that contestants in the Traitors are not very intelligent – I would have nothing on which to base that statement. But we’re not having it shoved down our throats that every contestant who appears on the Traitors is supersmart. We are on Genius Game. It’s in the title of the show. And I am not saying that anyone on Genius Game is not supersmart. But, and I am not condoning this, it does seem to be the case that in the UK, we don’t really like smart people. We don’t like cleverdicks, knowitalls and smartarses. To be extremely intelligent and yet pretty much universally liked or even loved you have to have the wit and charm of Sir Stephen Fry, and national treasures of his calibre don’t grow on trees. In his book “Brain Men” Marcus Berkman pointed out that it was the UK who gave the charming phrase ‘too clever by half’ to the world. So, I may be wrong, but I doubt that the GBP (Great British Public) will give two shiny hoots about who double crosses and manipulates whom in this game.

The strange thing about it all is David Tennant’s involvement. I think he once presented Have I Got News For You, but it really doesn’t seem his sort of thing at all. You only see him on a video screen anyway, and he doesn’t get to interact much with the players. Look, if I was in his position and they offered me oodles to do it I wouldn’t have turned them down, so I don’t blame him. It’s difficult to see what else he might have got from it.

If you like the sound of the show, but haven’t watched it yet, you need to do so before he series ends, because somehow I doubt it’ll be back once its over.