Why Amazing Race is the best reality show ever

The Amazing Race, the American reality colossus that began in 2001, is currently in its 36th season – a 37th is scheduled for next year. The local version, Amazing Race Australia, is in its eighth – or its fifth if you consider the current iteration hosted by Beau Ryan to be a separate show from the first domestic stab with Grant Bowler. Versions have also been produced in Israel, Vietnam, China, the Philippines, Canada, Norway, France, Brazil, Ukraine, Finland and more.

All this puts The Amazing Race among the very elite of reality TV franchises: successful enough to spawn both myriad international versions and plenty of copycats. Given how expensive it is to send dozens of people – with their own camera crews – around the world once or twice a year, the show has to have been a serious hit to keep justifying the cost. But obvious success aside, there is a strong case to be made that Race is, in terms of entertainment value, viewing satisfaction, and the exquisite art and craft of reality program-making, the best reality show ever to grace our screens.

The Amazing Race Celebrity Edition: still finding new places to visit.

For a start, the AR concept has built into it the presence of spectacular locations. On Survivor, they may spend time on pretty beaches, and on Masterchef they take some nice little trips to picturesque spots, but only The Amazing Race flits, in every episode, from incredible place to incredible place, taking in a dizzying array of glorious historical monuments, dazzling buildings, gob-smacking natural wonders and all-round gorgeous landscapes both urban and rural. The fact that in its 36th season the show is still visiting new countries, and finding new places to go and things to do in the ones they return to, is testament to the wondrous variety that our world has to offer, both in terms of its natural formation and the impressive things that humans have built on it.

There’s also a cultural element: Race exposes its participants – and by extension, we, the viewers – to a variety of different cultures, even if admittedly in an extremely brief and ephemeral way. Nobody is calling a reality show a comprehensive education in the cultures of the world, but a little glimpse of traditional dances, cuisines, artwork, occupations and customs provides a lovely taste of the world’s flavours. All of this combines to make The Amazing Race more than just a show to watch: it’s also an appetite-whetter for travel, making one’s feet itch and plans for one’s own trip start to percolate in the brain. That’s besides the fact that thanks to the locations chosen, it always just looks marvellous.

And let’s not neglect the importance of the host. Phil Keoghan, the Kiwi who sounds American but is far too laid back and charming to not be from the southern hemisphere, is pure magic: charming, kind, sympathetic and indefatigably human, performing with passion and without pretension, leaves all other reality hosts in the dust – not here the bombast of Ramsay or the smugness of Probst. (It should be mentioned that Beau Ryan, though naturally not in the class of the peerless Keoghan, does a damn fine job on the Australian show too.)

Then there are the tasks themselves: ranging from mind-bending puzzles to physically gruelling chores, from learning to dance to wrangling animals to joining in wrestling matches, transporting goods or eating revolting dishes or diving into icy water, The Amazing Race has dizzying diversity in its challenges that test every aspect of a person’s ingenuity and endurance. The element of choice also means that the contestants’ ability to pick the best task is tested along with their ability to actually do them.

As for the participants: over the years the race has embedded a number of archetypes for fans. There are always the loved-up couple who greet every challenge with patience and outpourings of affection for each other, along with the angry fractious couple who greet every challenge with screaming matches and seemingly imminent break-ups. There are the parent-child teams who use the race as a means to grow closer and gain new appreciation for each other. There are the identical twin teams, and the best friends teams who inexplicably think wearing matching outfits will make them look good on TV. There are the hyper-competitive military personnel and the hyper-egotistical cheerleader-model-influencer couples. There are the good-natured elderly strugglers and the flamboyant young show-offs.

All of them provide their own moments of joy, hilarity, frustration and schadenfreude. That last is important: every reality show needs people whose suffering you can rejoice in, and The Amazing Race always provides the people and ladles on the suffering. There is also the eternal amusement of seeing clueless Westerners battling language barriers and culture shock, not to mention paper maps.

One way that the race is far ahead of shows like Survivor – the only franchise that comes close to it for staying power and universal appeal – is that it proceeds at a cracking pace and is all about the action of the race, with barely a hint of the “mind games” that seem to take up 75per cent of a Survivor episode. The Amazing Race reveals character by putting its contestants through the challenges, and is won by whoever’s best at performing the tasks and navigating the vicissitudes of travel. Who is best at manipulating other teams and getting people to vote for them doesn’t come into it. This isn’t a popularity contest, it’s a race. That’s why it’s brilliant.

Most of all, it’s relatable. Although the teams may be selected for their quirks or unusual life stories, they are ordinary people fighting against situations that we have no trouble imagining ourselves in. Whether we laugh at them and think we’d do it easily, or our hearts bleed as we see how hard it is, we’re connected on a human level.

Sure, there’s occasionally a celebrity edition (and the fact that of five Beau Ryan series, the Australian version has thus far made two of them celebrity series is a bit much) – but the beauty of the Race is that even famous people, if plonked in a foreign country and asked to find their way to a volcano or herd pigs, are instantly reduced to the level of everyone else. No matter who you are when you start the race, once you hit the road, we’re all the same. It’s the kaleidoscopic beauty of the world, meshed with the equally infinite variety of human nature. That’s why it’s perfect.

Amazing Race Australia is on Monday, 7.30pm on Ten, and 10Play.

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