I cry most weeks watching Race Across the World, so I was not exactly surprised to find myself weeping when Jo and Kush reached the final Mongolian checkpoint and opened the guestbook to an empty page.
This programme has been the best thing on British TV for the better part of a decade now, and its success is precisely because it has the power to restore your faith in humanity. Through sincerity, hard-earned emotion, slow storytelling and the casting of good, kind, curious contestants (and no big egos, ever), it is the antidote to cynicism. The further each journey stretches, the more moving the personal ones become. Still, this seventh series, which took its teams from Palermo in Sicily to Hatgal in Mongolia, was the most special one yet.
Teenage boys get a rough time of it. Toxic masculinity, the manosphere, the male loneliness epidemic – there is a climate of panic concerning this group that condemns ordinary young men and treats them as pariahs to be feared. Jo and Kush, the 19-year-old best friends from Liverpool, are the opposite, and restored my hope for future generations of men.
They aren’t just close childhood friends, they have an astounding depth of understanding of each other and an ability to articulate it that most men twice their age could not manage. Kush, whose father died by suicide during the pandemic, is able to discuss the ways it has affected him – he struggles with overwhelm and anxiety – and expresses his emotions and grief without embarrassment. With each new, bizarre, transformative experience on the race, he felt both closer to and further from his father. The joy and the sadness were always together, as he was desperate to share what he’d seen and in disbelief that he can’t, and that he is growing into someone without him.
Jo, the more relaxed of the pair, knows him inside out. He is patient and compassionate, stays up with him when he’s spiralling, reassures him when he’s panicking, keeps him steady and talks it through. When things are better, he always makes sure Kush knows he needs him too: this goes both ways.
The way Jo spoke about Kush’s grief and mental health was astonishing in its maturity and perspective – many times I had to remind myself he was only 19. Until they delighted again in being teenage boys: flirting with Kazakhstani dancers, sparring in boxing gyms, throwing snowballs and taking selfies with locals and getting on stage with Mongolian throat singers. They have seized every opportunity with energy and open hearts and no inhibitions.
Jo and Kush at a Kazakhstani circumcision party (Photo: BBC/Studio Lambert)That, really, was what set this series apart – how much everyone embraced cultures they had no knowledge of beforehand. Race Across the World has always been about the people, not the countries, but on this most unfamiliar journey, through Europe and Central Asia, it was the route itself that forced everyone to release control. Uzbekistan is not a backpacking hotspot like, say, Peru. Kyrgyzstan does not have the infrastructure of Vietnam. To get anywhere, the teams have had to throw themselves into the trust of locals – staying in their houses and gers (nomadic tents), milking their cows, eating their horse meat, dancing at their discos, getting their friends’ taxis and relying on their generosity and help.
It has brought out the best of them. Harrison, who never understood why you’d spend money on holidays, has grown less uptight the more people he’s met – swapping half marathon medals with a teenager on a train, being shown a photo of Tesco by a Turkish man over dinner.
Widower Mark has been distracted from his grief by the great, expansive landscapes he never dreamed he’d see, and the customs and costumes of local families, slowly learning from his larger than life sister-in-law Margot who is already the kind of person starting sing-songs with local women and getting drunk with locals on trains.
Geography teacher Andrew, who wanted to stick to nature routes and stare out at craters, found the moments of real contemplation came when he was on a Mongolian yak farm or having dinner with strangers in a tent or serving food in a restaurant, urged by his daughter Molly who is much more of a people person.
Molly and Andrew’s relationship changed in front of our eyes (Photo: BBC/Studio Lambert)This year really highlighted how much relationships can still change, no matter how long you’ve been in them. Molly was desperate for her father to see her as an adult, and, with great pride and some sadness, he finally began to recognise that she can make decisions for herself – and more strikingly, that she can find positive solutions after making bad ones.
Harrison was finally able to talk to his sister Katie about how much of the burden she bore when their mum was ill while they were teenagers, and he was trying to avoid his emotions. Most unusual is the case of Mark and Margot. They have known each other for more than 40 years, but never had their own friendship. Doing the race in memory of Julia, Mark’s wife and Margot’s sister, they began to understand each other and develop a friendship independent of her – it has been a tremendously special thing to witness, that will inspire people watching to consider the people in their lives they didn’t choose themselves, and how much more they might enrich them.
Winning Race Across the World gets you £20,000 – and for Jo and Kush, that money will go the furthest. But the real prize is one they all win – and so do we, watching: having the world and all its possibilities burst wide open.
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