The drift of state realities is a real shame. Beyond small treasures like ‘El conquistador del fin del mundo’ (in ETB), we have to make do with talent competitions (cooking, mainly), dating shows or products starring second-rate celebrities (many from those dating shows) with the least possible jobs behind: celebrities in a house, celebrities on a farm, celebrities on a beach, celebrities jumping, celebrities dancing. It is what many believe is the only chance to succeed with these formats, but it wasn’t always like this.
In the early days of reality television, what the networks wanted was break with everything established and create risky concepts. Better or worse, but creative, something that is noticeably lacking today. In this climate, a television arrived ready to break with everything: it was young, new, ready to broadcast anime, ‘Yellow humor’, ‘Jackass’ in the Spanish style (‘6 pack’) or even the mythical meta-television contest ‘I am the one who most knows about television in the world’. When Cuatro dared with reality shows, only the best of the 22-year history of the format in our country could be born: ‘Peking Express’.
to sign in the red book
‘Beijing Express’ was an expensive format. Much more expensive, of course, than putting a bunch of cameras in a house and letting things happen (or not, as was seen in the latest ‘Secret Story’, probably the last attempt that Telecinco will ever make with anonymous): people were needed to follow the contestant couples all the waya huge production team, visas, trips, an expert script and editing team that knew how to encapsulate days and days of footage in a single hour and a half stage…
But the end result was worth it: ‘Peking Express’ was capable of moving people with the tension of the race and then with the friendliest face of countries that the Spaniards of 2008 only knew from the movies. The tests were exciting, the twists put in their exact moment: the first season was more a work of craftsmanship and love than any other past or present Spanish reality show (with the permission of the highly vindicatable, for other reasons, ‘Who wants to marry my son?’).
Obviously, he was not born in Spain. No creator ever approached a network, as stale as they tend to be when choosing their new shows, and said “I have an untested format, very expensive and very different from everything that is doneWhen did we start?” To talk about the beginning of the adventure and racing reality show, we have to go back to 1995, when Mark Burnett, who later struck gold with ‘Survivor’, launched ‘Eco-Challenge’, a race around one or several countries in which there were no eliminated, but there was a winner. It had the emotion and the landscapes, but as a good proto-format it lacked something (which did not prevent it from returning last year as a renewed reality show for Amazon Prime Video).
Shortly after, based on Elise Doganieri’s backpacking experiences, came ‘The Amazing Race’, one of the basic programs of any fan of reality shows which is quite an institution today: a tag team race around the world with tests, backstabbing, eliminations, rescues and a lot of frustration. In the heat of the program presented by Phil Keoghan, ‘Peking Express’ was born in 2004, a Dutch contest in which eight couples ran through three countries (Russia, Mongolia and China) spending only a little money a day and using the houses of local people as a place to shelter at night. A hit was born.
To run!
In Spain, a format like this was absolutely unprecedented. It came before ‘Traveller Streets’, for example, at a time when travel shows were rather boring. Presented by Paula Vázquez, it was understood as another way of making television: in the face of the ‘Big Brother’ family and the greengrocerism into which Telecinco was falling, Cuatro decided to opt for a more elegant format, which put the focus on exploration, tests, intelligence, and friendship rather than wild yelling, anger, and arguments. Surprisingly, it was a success, demonstrating that this type of program is possible in our country, although some insist on the contrary.
‘Peking Express’ premiered on September 13, 2008 with an 11.2% share and 1,718,000 viewers and it would end its journey with 15.9% and 2,610,000, absolutely crazy figures seen now, when the final of ‘Survivors’ on Telecinco lacks 400,000 viewers to match that (no matter how much it surpasses it in screen share). The critics and the public were benevolent: a new stellar format was born with the victory of Fernando and María, who began as a couple in crisis and ended up asking for marriage on the finish line.
Ten couples started a race in which everything happened: the route, which was the same as the original Dutch program (later we would copy them from France), saw from couples who did not know each other until the minute the stage began (and who were expelled that same day) to a religion teacher running with his student or the forced withdrawal of a couple due to medical problems (more specifically, the unexpected return of a cancer). Fernando and María took 178,000 euros and a path of roses began for ‘Peking Express’. Or not?
And then came Mediaset
The first season of ‘Peking Express’ had impressive places where they did different immunity tests: the Hermitage square in Moscow, Lake Baikai, the Gobi desert… Part of the grace was that everything was very far from us at a time when traveling was still not so easy. And if season one followed the Trans-Siberian route, season two decided to double the excitement: it would go through the Himalayas, touring China, Nepal and India. And this was where things started to go wrong. Not because of the places or the tests, but because of the new tone, more cunning and with less sense of wonder.
One of the couples, Meritxell and Alazne, mother and daughter, drove everyone crazy during the race. So much so that they became the absolute protagonists in the production… Until one of the members of a rival couple, Silvia and Carles, He even slapped Alazne on a bus. After that embarrassing moment (for the time, now it would be another episode), both voluntarily retired, giving mother and daughter another chance. It didn’t matter who won ‘Peking Express 2’ (it was Carmela and Antonio, friends from a town in Malaga): all the promos were based on the slap, he doesn’t go any further, the controversy. Curiously, it coincided with the purchase of Cuatro by Mediaset.
The audience plummeted to the new and wrong approach to ‘Beijing Express’, a trend that continued in the third season, ‘The Dragon Route’, in which the twists worked (false eliminations, flags that lowered a position) and the route was as beautiful as it was copied from the edition French (China, Laos, Thailand and Indonesia). However, the cunning tone continued, although more subtle, and to the fatigue of the format was added the deterioration of the Cuatro brand, already seen as a secondary channel of Mediaset where the purria was going to stop. Little was left of that ‘Cuatrosfera’ and the good intentions. Money talks.
The entrance of Jesús Vázquez as presenter and the change of location was the finishing touch. ‘Adventure in Africa’ passed through Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa and some of the news was disconcerting: a couple did not even get to start the race, there was a recovery in program 3 without giving time to support any of the teams, it started later than usual, the duration of each episode was increased… And in the end, had stages that even fell below 5% share: unlike the first season, this one went down episode by episode. The program, hardly identifiable with the one that premiered four years earlier, went fallow. And seeing the drift, maybe it was for the best.
Resurrection and final end of the adventure
Four more years passed until Atresmedia gave the format another chance, putting Cristina Pedroche as presenter on Antena 3, returning to Asia (‘The route of a thousand temples’ made up of Myanmar, Malaysia and Singapore)… And adding new mechanics even more based on increasing bad vibes among the contestants, forced to nominate a couple so that they would drop a position automatically at that stage and that brothers-in-law Ángel and Bea ended up winning before 1,904,000 people: around 14% shareit seemed that ‘Beijing Express’ had returned.
The problem is that, as much as the show dominated the race and the experiences themselves, the contestants did not seem willing to be manipulatedso the stars were the ones who entered the game, some María del Amor and Yaneli who well encapsulated the Mediaset spirit that Atresmedia could have left behind. And in the casting they knew it perfectly.
Audience success was a mirage: In 2016, ‘The Elephant Route’, which took ten couples of contestants from Sri Lanka to Bombay, tried to revitalize La Sexta but his attempt to turn it into a freak casting show was an utter failure that ended up sinking the franchise completely. As much as the participation of the audience choosing the unknown couple was introduced for the first (and last) time, there was not so much interest: the screen share rivaled that of ‘Adventure in Africa’ and with 8.5% of share, Matías and Nabil won the last prize of the last episode of ‘Peking Express’.
Will ‘Peking Express’ return in a television ecosystem like the current one? The program continues to be successful outside our borders (this year it made a career in Italy, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Greece or the Czech Republic) but linear Spanish television seems determined to spend as little as possible: the less they move from a house, the better. This absurd immobility leads people to seek refuge in a streaming that, when it comes to realities, doesn’t have much interest in innovating either, with false promises like ‘Insiders’, failed experiments like ‘LOL: If you laugh you lose’ or vague attempts to copy the little that works linearly, like ‘FBoy Island’.
is missed a program of adventures, competition, races, exotic places, tests, humor and discovery: ‘Peking Express’ was the perfect format until they domesticated it and Mediaset took away its innocence with a stroke of the pen. And hopefully one day there will be who dares to bring it back to greatness.