There’s one big problem with Race Across the World

In the BBC show, every problem seems ultimately surmountable, says Will Gore – but imagine if each team had a child in tow

In a real family holiday, a child tells their parents he or she hates them and subsequently doesn’t speak for three days (Studio Lambert Ltd)

I am not an inveterate traveller. I don’t particularly yearn to see distant lands or to backpack around the globe.

In my twenties, I was lucky that work took me overseas quite regularly. I enjoyed meeting new people and being in novel places – but even then I rarely took the chance to go and see the sights in whatever country I might be.

It won’t come as a surprise, therefore, that while many viewers of the BBC’s Race Across the World watch the show for adventure inspiration, I tend to view it with a growing sense of “rather them than me”.

The latest series, which started last week, has a fairly typical set of pairings: a retired married couple (cute but with the potential for a row), a couple of siblings (intense), a duo of best mates (very intense) and two mothers with their respective daughters (so far, so delightful). All merrily set off on a budget journey from Sapporo in Japan, racing the 15,000km to Lombok in Indonesia, hoping to cope without phones and the internet and to bag a £20,000 prize for arriving first.

Fundamentally, it’s a cunning cross between a Michael Palin travelogue and Big Brother. Cameras are on hand not only to catch the beauty of Mount Fuji but also the effing and blinding from Alfie and Owen when they realise they’ve mislaid their map – and the awkward interactions between the teams, who are caught between feelings of comradeship and competitiveness.

All the rival couples have their foibles and mishaps. Some are very obviously in it to win it, others are primarily on a voyage of self-discovery or a journey to (re)determine the nature of their relationship. It’s good telly. But even putting aside my own lack of wanderlust, what irritates me about Race Across the World is that it makes every problem appear surmountable. And that’s probably true – but only because none of these travelling teams has a kid in tow.

Admittedly, there are mums and their grown-up daughters, and a couple of contestants seem like they might at some point tip over into toddler-tantrum mode – but imagine if each pair had an actual eight-year-old with them, or a maudlin teenager.

In the TV show, there are familial tiffs from time to time, but like sensible adults they work through it and are all the stronger for it. In a real family holiday, a child tells their parents he or she hates them and subsequently doesn’t speak for three days. Similarly, while the BBC occasionally shows a world racer having a bad back or a headache, what makes for less fun TV is a child being sick all over the back of a taxi, or becoming so constipated that their parents spend an entire day desperately searching foreign pharmacies for super-strong laxatives.

Of course, there is no physical violence in Race Across the World, but stick a five-year-old into the mix and things might be very different. Perhaps they’d throw apples at an old lady’s conservatory, or just start kicking their dad for no reason whatsoever, in the middle of a crowded street.

And although the show’s contestants sometimes have moments when they become separated, they usually locate each other swiftly enough. There isn’t the sense of panic that there might be if a small boy decided to go off on their own adventure, sparking a major search by police and coastguard, before finally being located two hours later in an ice-cream van.

And can you imagine if the race began with an emotional 14-year-old being told that they weren’t allowed to look at a screen or search the internet for a month? The fury would provide enough energy to power the entire production – so it might actually be worth trying.

Indeed, while I am a very long way from wanting to try this experiment, going on Race Across the World might be the only way I could stop my children from obsessing about Minecraft or watching endless YouTube shorts. I’m sure they’d thank me for that in the end – if they didn’t kill me first.

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