Drop Zone
Synopsis
A show in which teams spent two days in an exotic location, with the winners moving on to the next exotic location and the losers being left behind. Which sounds both exciting and cool.
...Sounds being the keyword here, sadly.
Next stop: the beachTeams of three would be given a task to provide a staggered start, once a team completed the task they could depart, facing a difficult hike, the specific rules changed each week, avoiding paved roads was the standard rule for rural environments, but the details of what vehicles they were forbidden from hitching lifts from varied; some weeks it would be road vehicles other times passenger vehicles generally, with a time penalty for violating this highly variable rule.
While they did this hike, they would be required to learn some information about the location, and tested on it in a task at the end of the hike. The best performers on the task would sleep in a luxury hotel, losers would sleep in something like a cow shed, or some tents, or whatever.
Please don't tell the Interceptor had made his return to television.At the start of a new day, a third task, with the team who completed yesterday's hike the fastest being able to give a handicap to teams of their choice and an advantage to other teams (naturally including themselves in this latter group), be it a different amount of cows to navigate through a rural village or an easier to handle boat. This task, again, provided a staggered start for another day of hiking, this time the team who reached the helicopter last would be left behind.
The main problem with the show was simply that, however physically demanding and difficult long distance hiking is, it just doesn't make for interesting viewing. And around three quarters of this show was taken up by hiking. There are some plus points, however - The tasks were often genuinely interesting and fun to watch, Steve Jones made for a competent host, and the cinematography on display was simply stunning, particularly during the opening monologues. Unfortunately 45 minutes of hiking over gruelling terrain, or labyrinthesque metropolises, proved to be a task that was simply too difficult the editing department.
Steve Jones living the good life.So, that'd be yet another failed attempt to bring The Amazing Race to Britain without actually bringing The Amazing Race over here, then.
Trivia
Supported by the Thrillseekers programme, an initiative of BBC Learning.
For reasons unknown, after the programme was recorded, it sat on the shelf for over a year, before finally airing in a Sunday afternoon slot.
