Destination X (BBC1)
The Beatles didn’t invent the mystery tour. A century ago, holidaymakers were paying their pound for a ride to some surprise seaside town in an open–topped bus called a charabanc.
Rob Brydon is attempting to update the tradition in Destination X, taking 13 travellers and sending them off who–knows–where in a luxury coach.
To win the game, and £100,000, all they have to do is guess where they are.
But the fun of an old–fashioned mystery tour lies in the sights and discoveries along the way. Rob has ruined it by making sure nobody, including the viewers, has a clue what country they’re in, let alone what the views are like.
The coach windows are blacked out. When the players do step outside, they wear electronic goggles that allow them only the briefest of glimpses.
In one of the show’s many ill–judged twists, there are miniature cameras inside the goggles, so we can see the contestants’ eyeballs staring around blindly.
Rob Brydon is attempting to update the tradition in Destination X, taking 13 travellers and sending them off who–knows–where in a luxury coach
The coach windows are blacked out. When the players do step outside, they wear electronic goggles that allow them only the briefest of glimpses
At one point, all goggled up, they were loaded onto helicopters and whirled around the countryside. This exercise in sensory deprivation and disorientation made me feel queasy, just watching it.
But I’d rather go flying in a blindfold than spend a night on the claustrophobic Destination X dormitory coach, fitted out with narrow bunkbeds along a narrow corridor, like the cabins in a submarine.
‘I hope people have got good hygiene,’ worried 22–year–old Mahdi, the youngest player. The following morning, he packed his suitcase and quit the game. Let’s pray it was just the snoring he couldn’t stand.
The game began with a blizzard of feints and fakery that seemed to have no real point. The players arrived at an airport in Baden–Baden that was clearly not real: the baggage counter was between the duty–free shop and the boarding gate, with not a customs officer in sight.
Most of the ‘passengers’ were extras, who stood up on a signal and walked out together. More artificial still, the actors playing airport staff were chosen because they had identical twins – so that similar faces could pop up at different places along the route.
The game began with a blizzard of feints and fakery that seemed to have no real point
By now, Destination X, which continues tonight, was starting to resemble an art ‘happening’, and it didn’t get any less contrived when the players were herded into a box in the middle of a provincial town, somewhere in Central Europe.
Every so often, a slot like a letterbox opened and the travellers crowded round trying to spy clues.
Brydon, parading in a double–breasted blazer like a Pontins holiday rep, did his best to inject some laughs, but his script didn’t have one memorable line.
If the Beeb was trying to combine The Traitors with Race Across The World, it’s succeeded – but only by losing the best bits from both shows. There’s no skulduggery, no sensational scenery, no jeopardy, no excitement and no point.
