For reasons that are not always entirely clear, celebrities love doing weird challenges on TV: eating live spiders; falling backwards out of a helicopter into open water; hunting down ghosts with Rylan Clark. There are so many of these shows, in fact, that it can be hard to remember what some of these celebrities did before they entered the British TV challenge circuit. Was she on Gogglebox? Did he do Towie? Why are they now fumbling around in total darkness in an underground bunker with Chris Eubank and Danny Dyer? It’s anyone’s guess. And on it goes.
Now to Celebrity Race Across the World, which – although it sounds like many of the aforementioned – is quite a bit different. Yes, there are celebrities. And, yes, they are doing a weird thing on TV. In this case, trying to get from northern Brazil to southern Chile in pairs, in the shortest time and without smartphones or bank cards and with just £36 in cash a day. But it is a lot less eye-roll inducing and a lot more wholesome than that sounds. This is not about watching C-lister reality show veterans get grumpy in the jungle because they can’t get a balayage. Just as in the civilian version, you will find yourself caring about these people, rooting for them to succeed.
