Destination X

I blame the man, the myth, the legend, the fashion icon that is Rob Brydon for getting suckered into Destination X, 8 hours of my life i'll never get back.

The show features a dozen contestants being driven around Europe on a bus with blanked out windows, and being let off at the end of each day and them having to guess where they are.

They get let off once or twice during the day to play games through which the winners win clues to their desintation at the end of that day.

In one respect the game was quite a clever one of misdirection: those in the know can misdirect those not in the know, and this worked more than once to get people thrown off the bus - the usual format of one person out each episode happened.

Who gets thrown off is that person who places their X in the map room the furthest away from the destination.

All too obvious if you know, not at all if you don't

Once you get the hang of the game it's easy if you have the right sort of cultural capital - like one episode had and F1 model car and a picture of Lewis Hamilton which featured - easy, Monaco, and lots of gambling references.

However another was screaming Sound of Music, but who the hell knew this was filmed in Salzburg? I certainly didn't!

A game, not a fair one...

But who cares right? The sharpest and most knowledgeable never stood a chance as many games allowed the mob to penalise people of their choice - and the strongest player got thrown off as a result of one of these.

But then again surely someone who was well travelled could have identified much more easily where they were, easy to lie about when you applied to be on the game!

Final thoughts...

I'd be surprised if this comes back for a second season, it was hardly 'buzzing' with excitement and it was quite irritating for the most part.

Not least because of the various 'red herrings' - what's the point in having misleading clues when they've got no idea where they are? It just makes the outcome of the game rest on those who get the particular right clues, then reinforced, those who don't get the right first clues just go further and further into the dark!

Having said that, this was surprisingly compelling viewing and I do love Rob Brydon!