This hit ABC show from the ’90s is back. Can it work again?

Nearly three decades ago, about 25,000 people requested application forms to be part of ABC TV’s first series of Race Around the World. The show’s premise was to make 10 films in 10 countries in 100 days while travelling solo and filming and editing the films on the road.

After 1345 applications, and interviews with 40 candidates, eight people were selected.

The original Race Around the World crew (from left): Claudia Rowe, Ben Davies, Bentley Dean, John Safran, Daniel Marsden, Olivia Rousset, Scott Herford and Kim Traill.

I can still remember the frisson of sitting down on Monday nights at 7.30pm in 1997 (and 1998 for the second series) to watch these people – Ben Davies, Bentley Dean, Scott Herford, Daniel Marsden, Olivia Rousset, Claudia Rowe, John Safran and Kim Traill – send their mini-documentaries from places such as Mauritius, Lebanon, Norway, India, Greece, Pakistan, Mozambique and Finland.

Still vivid in my mind is author and broadcaster Safran, then a self-described “token, skinny, pale, whiny person”, drinking his urine in front of a suburban toilet block in his application video for the series.

“So what did it taste like?” he asks, holding the urine aloft and wearing goggle-like glasses. “Well, it was less salty than I expected it to be, and it’s also of a denser consistency than it looks.”

Contestant Olivia Rousset’s visit to a porn set in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles remains memorable. There, she met a man fulfilling a lifetime dream of being in an adult film. His failure to give the climatic goods, so to speak, in a movie that was called Boobwatch 3, was as sad as it was riveting and almost comic.

Race Around the World became a must-see ratings hit. The contestants’ films, presumably posted back by snail mail, were rated by a panel of judges, with Richard Fidler hosting, and the audience. We dissected them at home, university and work. Young people on TV, wowzer. TV documentarians filming whatever they wanted – however they wanted, against the clock – felt rare.

The contestants were adventurous, spunky, brave, occasionally in some danger, it seemed, and often very funny. They were heroic. Watching via our chunky cathode ray tube TV, with no mobile phone in our hands, we were transfixed. Race Around the World inspired crushes, reverence, concern and mild envy for the filmmakers.

Now, applications are now open for the ABC’s reboot of the show for 2026. Any Australian resident aged over 18 can send in a one- to two-minute film to win their spot on the show’s reboot. Hosted by Zan Rowe – with Safran, enfant terrible of the original series, as a judge – it follows the same format.

But it also vies with 28 years of a changing world – from the birth of Wi-Fi to the nature of lenses recording our every move. Anyone can make a short film and publish it publicly, immediately.

The original host of Race Around the World, Richard Fidler.

What will next year’s contestants, their documentaries and the destinations and stories they reveal, be like? Can the magic of the 1997-1998 series be replicated? And is that the wrong question to ask, given racing around the world for reality TV shows is fairly commonplace?

Apple – to name one brand – has released 51 different iPhone models since 2007; travel videos, and travelling around the world, feel less exceptional now.

Like any TV show (fiction or non-fiction), Race Around the World’s characters made its first two series special. It was several formats – travel, a competition and a live studio production with an audience – but what gripped us was the personalities of the contestants. Their audacity, intrepid nature and vulnerability. Their clever editing and storytelling without a mobile phone and what is now considered basic or “legacy” recording and editing processes. They used camcorders with a flip-out screen.

What particularly stands out watching the original Race Around the World is the unvarnished nature of the eight contestants. They talked to the camera with vulnerability and not a jot of honed selfie/social media nous. And being cancelled was not a thing. Could a contestant nowadays run naked through the streets of Israel – as Safran did in 1997 – while wearing a St Kilda Football Club scarf and beanie?

The original contestants had no YouTube, Instagram or TikTok following (because they didn’t exist) and public access to the internet was four years old. Search engines were AltaVista or Ask Jeeves, the lightest laptops weighed two kilos and widespread Wi-Fi was two years away.

Filming adventures on a mobile phone is available to almost anyone. AI can create a lifelike facsimile of the world without a filmmaker leaving their bedroom. And the prevalence of cameras has changed how people behave in public.

British documentarian Adam Curtis, who regularly uses decades of archive footage to explore change in modern times, has noted that, from 1998 onwards, people have “stopped being real” in real-life news and TV footage. In other words, as smartphones have emerged, people have become more self-conscious.

So, what can Race Around the World 2026 do to blaze a trail now? What would we like to see from the new version? In an Australian Story interview in March, the original series’ producer Paige Livingston said her only regret about the original series was that it was not more diverse.

The 2026 competition application – which again offers the chance to create 10 films in 10 countries in 100 days while travelling solo – asks only that people be aged 18 and over, an Australian citizen or permanent resident and available for shooting between April and August 2026.

The real test is whether the chosen contestants’ mini-documentaries can capture people, scenarios and moments around the world that we haven’t already seen or can’t find on YouTube, social media or 50 TV channels and streamers.

It’s harder to make TV stories – moving, scary, funny, change-the-world stories – that cause viewers to hold their breath or think about the subject for days afterwards. The whole of the internet is already trying to grab our attention. How do you compete with that?

Maybe that’s the key. Keep it small. Forget the web. Find the heart of other humans. And don’t drink your own urine.

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