‘Discovering Canary Islands’ is to ‘Peking Express’ what Champagne is to champagne. Rakuten has tried to revive the legendary adventure reality show with an insurmountable version from which all the risk, emotion and charisma have been removed. The result is a reality show (free, mind you) that completely wastes its unique location and makes a fool of itself with a Pilar Rubio totally out of her comfort zone trying to manage as best he can a soulless program.
peeling prickly pears
The idea of making an adventure and travel reality show in the Canary Islands is great: the scenery is splendid and you can do anything, from paragliding to a go-kart race, zip-lining or exploring its history. Instead, ‘Discovering Canary Islands’ proposes tests of such a low budget that turns the adventure into pure bureaucracy.
In the first episode, the contestants must get together in teams to accumulate figures for three minutes asking in shops in the area, peel eight prickly pears and eat one and, finally, walking down a marked cave path while a contestant is blindfolded. As exciting as it sounds. But still, with evidence this unstimulating, programs like ‘The amazing race’ have managed to create gold thanks to a vibrant montage. It is not the case.
He was convinced that, after each test, the contestants would take their car or have to ask the neighbors for help and, as in a good adventure contest, they would try to overtake the team that is in the lead. The real tension is created in these moments: in ‘The amazing race’ it was the pranks at the airport, in ‘Peking express’ the reckless overtaking… and in ‘Discovering Canary Islands’ they have a driver who takes them from one place to another. another preserving the order in which the tests have finished. The format of the program consists of three tests: whoever wins in one has an advantage in the next. No race, no overtaking, no nothing. The vacuum.
Very well, Manuel
If ‘Discovering Canary Islands’ were created in Spain and its contestants were from Zaragoza and Castellón, then nothing would happen: a slip left at home. But the program was born with an international vocationand all the contestants are influencers in their country of origin, so There is no other option but to shoot in English, the native language of only a couple of them.
And this is especially noticeable in Pilar Rubio, who is totally out of place speaking in a language she does not control (or, if you control it, you don’t feel comfortable expressing yourself in it). This adds a layer of surrealism to a program that is already a rarity in which money has been thrown (no doubt) but in the wrong departments, and which is missing two or three reviews of the format.
I don’t know what happened during its creation, but the rules are not well explained and the excuse that Pilar Rubio gives for its existence (finding the eighth secret island, San Borondón) does not hold up at all because they do not take steps to find it, losing internal coherence. If the tests gave clues to find the island to the first team to solve them, or there were points that increased the possibility of expulsion, or… ‘Discovering Canary Islands’ is an adventure reality show that seems made by someone who has never seen an adventure reality show.
Saint Boring
Having examples that in Spain it is possible to do such a good program, such as ‘The Conqueror of the End of the World’, ‘Naufragoak’ (only in Basque), the beginnings of ‘Survivors’ (before becoming a repository of second-rate celebrities) or ‘Peking Express’ itself, which offers Rakuten has no forgiveness. ‘Discovering Canary Islands’ could have been a great show but it lacks good cinematography, tests that squeeze the contestants and a format that manages to create intrigue.
Instead, what we have is a vague, dishonest, off-beat TV show, more like a summer camp than a proper television show. There is something, at some point in the production of ‘Discovering Canary Islands’, where something went wrong and could not be fixed. Perhaps it was the lack of budget, ideas, haste or excessive control of someonebut it is clear that any good ideas were drowned out by the nothingness that the program has ended up being.
It’s a shame, because it had everything to be, at the very least, a first-class entertainment and it has ended up being everything that those who do not watch adventure reality shows due to prejudice believe them to be. A flat boredom in which nothing really has emotion or importanceand who continually feels like Pilar Rubio speaking English: out of place.