Race Across the World has a lot to answer for. Just as The Traitors seems to have inspired endless shows built around backstabbing and betrayal, all offering diminishing returns compared to the original, TV producers have started attempting to recreate the success of the BBC’s beloved travel competition.
Last summer, Destination X roped in Rob Brydon to preside over a globe-trotting trip with clues and puzzles. Now, the perma-cheerful Bradley Walsh has been dragged from the presumably air-conditioned comfort of the original Chase studio to take the quiz on the road in a spin-off that’s inevitably titled The Chase Around the World (although it feels destined to be mis-named Chase Across the World, at least by me).
Perhaps someone at ITV decided that Walsh, who already enjoys televised overseas jaunts with his son Barney in Breaking Dad, simply needed more time to work on his already impressive tan. Or maybe someone high up at the broadcaster was watching the BBC Race and thought: “You know what this needs? Mark ‘The Beast’ Labbett and Anne ‘The Governess’ Hegerty leering ominously around the side of an ice cream stand in Rome.”
Whatever the rationale, the Chase juggernaut is now, as Walsh’s voiceover puts it in the opening moments, “going global” – and the result is a strange hybrid that shouldn’t quite work, but is somehow weirdly endearing.
The “smartest road trip in the world”, as they’re calling it, begins in Rome, where the six pairs of contestants take part in what is essentially a big-budget treasure hunt, dashing to the city’s various tourist landmarks while answering vaguely Italianate trivia (“Which Teletubby shares its name with an Italian river?”).
Among them is a father-daughter duo who previously took part in the family-themed spin-off of The Chase, and are therefore billed as being on some sort of revenge mission, as if to avenge their honour against Hegerty (the Chaser who booted them out last time around).
The contestants’ goal is to complete the trail the fastest and to be the first to arrive at a final checkpoint, where Walsh is waiting. The slowest pair must then take part in a sort of micro-Chase with Labbett and Hegerty – and if they fail, they’re out of the game, and won’t move on to the next location with the rest of the players.
The format doesn’t quite transition seamlessly from the studio to the outside world. There is a lot of squinting at iPads showing pre-recorded footage of the Chasers asking their questions, which doesn’t feel like the best use of the Roman backdrop, and scenes showing the players debating their final answers while sat in their rental Fiats aren’t exactly nail-biting stuff.
There’s a slightly odd disconnect between these comparatively low-key quizzing moments and interminable footage of the contestants legging it on foot from site to site, with grandiose classical music only over-egging the stakes.
And yet did I find myself getting inordinately frustrated when the contestants struggled to realise that the names of all five members of Steps were in fact a signpost to their next destination… the Spanish Steps? Absolutely (shout out to the millennial question master).
Essentially, The Chase Around the World is pure summer silliness. It’s TV designed to be watched while your fan buzzes ambiently and your heat-frazzled brain dissociates to the sight of Walsh’s tan exponentially deepening.
