Chemistry beats rivalry as celebs tackle the great Aussie road trip

The Big Trip ★★½
Wednesday, Seven, 8.30pm

I always feel a little bit sorry for competitors on celebrity reality shows who have to compete to win prizes for charity. It seems so cruel that just because they’re famous, they don’t get to take home the cash themselves – after all, if they weren’t in need of it, they wouldn’t be on the show in the first place. It’s true they’re all getting paid anyway, but that doesn’t feel quite the same as watching a show where participants genuinely could have their lives changed by victory.

Mitch Edwards (left), Dilruk Jayasinha, Anthony Lehmann and Lydia Lassila in The Big Trip.Credit: Seven

On Seven’s new The Big Trip, the celebrities aren’t competing to give cash to charities, but to give cars to “unsuspecting fans” – although you have to think that the fans who are invited to the show’s finale will be suspecting something. They’re also competing in cars – the titular trip is a road trip – and it becomes clear early on that the show’s automotive sponsor is hellbent on getting its money’s worth. The Big Trip hammers us with shots of sleek machines the way MasterChef goes in tight on high-end fry pans.

The Big Trip carries more than a faint whiff of the reality behemoth The Amazing Race, which in its Australian edition has also gone all in on celebrity contestants in recent times. In a nutshell, four pairs of famous folk must drive from the vast expanse of the Nullarbor to Sydney, while periodically undergoing challenges served up by the producers – the biggest challenge being to remember to keep being witty and charming at all times. The four teams include some who have experienced the brutal grind of reality TV previously: renovating couple Mitch Edwards and Mark McKie are hitting the road having a couple of seasons of The Block under their belt, and Olympic gold medallist Lydia Lassila is paired with actor and fellow Survivor veteran Pia Miranda. Opposing them are what might be called the wackier half of the cast: actor Gyton Grantley and comedian Nikki Osborne, and Dilruk Jayasinha and Anthony “Lehmo” Lehmann, both comedians, actors and ex-accountants.

An obvious difference between this show and The Amazing Race, apart from the fact that this is not, technically, a race, is the scale of the enterprise. This is a dash across a slice of one country, rather than around the world, which has pros and cons. Obviously, there’s less variety and exoticism, but on the plus side it’s a hell of a lot cheaper, and the whole exercise is streamlined and easier to follow – no need to be cutting back and forth between teams in far-flung places when everyone’s following the same path and mostly competing in challenges alongside each other.

Celebrities (from left) Lydia Lassila, Pia Miranda, Nikki Osborne and Gyton Grantley in The Big Trip.Credit: Seven

There’s also, obviously, the cosy vibe of small-town Australia as the celebrities motor through the outback, like a cross between Back Roads and It’s A Knockout. Host Dave Thornton puts a lot of early emphasis on the claim the show is “bringing back the great Aussie road trip”, which is an assertion that includes several bold claims: that’s a thing, that at some point it stopped being a thing, and that this show represents its triumphant return. It feels vaguely like claiming that My Kitchen Rules is bringing back the great Aussie dinner party: why not just push the genuine strength of the show, that is, well-known and fairly charismatic people being pushed out of their comfort zone with the ever-present possibility of them having a nervous breakdown?

Thornton is an amiable enough host, laconic and amusing, though it’s hard to shake the feeling that he’d have been better deployed as a contestant. Both host and contestants have essentially the same task, though: to maintain that tricky balance between “this is all just mates mucking around” and “this is a serious competition with actual stakes”. The former tends to predominate, and that’s probably to the show’s benefit, as just like most real-life road trips, good company is more important than who gets there first. It helps that the teams comprise people with clear and genuine affection for each other: chemistry is a far bigger part of this trip than rivalry. If you can enjoy that, it’s a fun ride.

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