From a chalk-and-cheese duo obsessed with custard creams to in-laws who didn’t get on until a family death – brace yourself for another journey of big feelings
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here is ice. A bear lopes across a vast white tundra, weaving footprints in the snow. Closeup of a snow leopard. Crisp crunch of boots in thick snow. Heavy breathing … Running … Screaming … Is it the latest Paul Greengrass thriller? No. The words “51 Days Earlier” appear. Volare starts playing. And now we’re in sunny Palermo, Sicily: the southern Italian city conquered more than any other in Europe. Where else could we be but at the starting line of Race Across the World?
You know when a BBC series has gone stratospheric because the opening gets suitably hysterical and starts to think it’s a Bourne spin-off. And so it comes to pass with the sixth series of the BBC flagship show, now such a powerful harbinger of spring on these small isles that it has replaced daffodils. The premise, for the stubborn percent who haven’t succumbed, is simple and brilliant; a formula that, like the cometh of spring, will never get old.
Five intrepid (and increasingly knackered, and lovable) duos are deposited in one part of the world and ordered to make it to another unfathomably faraway destination with the cash equivalent of an air fare. They have to surrender their phones and bank cards. They get only a GPS tracker and comically unfoldable map to aid them. The money has to cover everything – bed, board, transport – and they can earn extra along the way by working shifts in restaurants, hotels, and the like. The winners get £20,000.
