With niceness in short global supply, a little bit on TV can go a long way. Reality competitions thrive on it: a large part of the joy of The Great British Bake Off, say, or The Great British Sewing Bee, or the one where people make clay pots, is watching nice people do nice things. Apart from that time when Sky History accidentally let someone with neo-Nazi tattoos on to a woodworking competition and the whole thing had to be binned, the producers of a certain type of reality show are usually pretty good at casting the right type of participant: earnest, self-deprecating, amusingly eccentric.
Race Across the World replaced arts and crafts with overseas travel, but it was another show where the pleasantness of the personnel was as important as the activity they did – and the BBC Two hit is a big influence on Channel 4’s new nice-reality effort, Worlds Apart. Another distant starting point, this time Tokyo, is the place where we once again meet pairs of contestants who will work in tandem to try to win a cash prize. The first twist here is that they’re strangers, not friends or relatives. The second is that each duo has a huge age gap: the younger member is mid-20s at most, while the elder is late 60s at least. The young people have never or rarely been abroad, while the older ones’ life situations had made them think they would never globetrot again.
Val, who hopes this trip will end a spell of feeling ‘down’, with her new teammate Aaron. Photograph: Channel 4
As the youngsters are set the preliminary challenge of finding their partners by following cryptic clues through city streets, the stipulation that they can’t be seasoned travellers has one clear benefit: their lack of privilege makes them easy to root for. Emma, 18, from Blackpool, says she won’t miss home because she doesn’t have one, having been in foster care for the past decade. Katie, a 21-year-old from Warrington who works with elderly people, could never afford to holiday so far away. Nor could Lawrence, a 24-year-old London office worker who confesses that his days playing truant from school have left him with some catching up to do. The clue that is meant to lead him to 68-year-old Rosie, who is waiting patiently on a park bench within sight of a public toilet, features the phrase “caught short”, which Lawrence has never heard. He wonders if “caught” relates to fishing or tennis. “Every day’s a learning day,” he cheerfully says later, when Rosie explains.
Among the representatives of the older generation are divorced 69-year-old Tony, widowed 80-year-old Barbara, and 73-year-old Colin, who describes himself as “a bit of an acquired taste” and is carrying a suitcase that’s so old he has to lift it because it doesn’t have wheels. Val, 71, says she hopes this trip will end a spell of feeling “down”. Their vulnerability makes their delight at meeting a new friend who will benefit from their wisdom all the sweeter. Barbara and Kate gushing over each other’s clothes and makeup like best pals, or Rosie and Lawrence quickly learning how to combine her knowledge with his optimism are scenes of such wholesome purity that you want everyone to succeed in the tasks they’re given.
The tasks, however, are where Worlds Apart somewhat falls apart. Each pair has to play a little game that showcases a different part of Tokyo’s culture: distinguishing real sushi from the lifelike plastic models shown in restaurant windows, or working out which of a set of quotes are Buddhist sayings and which are lines from movies. Charlotte, a Swansea 25-year-old whose chattiness has got her into trouble on the checkouts at Asda because talking to customers affects her “scan speed”, is paired with Colin and his ancient suitcase, and asked to decipher emojis that have been arranged to represent common English idioms. Once Colin has explained to Charlotte what an idiom is, they can begin.
As a competition, this just isn’t exciting or interesting enough. Clearly, the presence of octogenarians means there can’t be challenges as expansive and energised as travelling hundreds of miles by road, rail and water, as happens on Race Across the World, but these parlour games really are underpowered.
But boredom is suddenly replaced by outrage when the scores are revealed, potentially leading to one team being eliminated and causing several contestants to look bereft at the prospect of losing their new companion. It feels cruel to break something as lovely as the bond between a lonely pensioner and a bewildered, disenfranchised young adult – each in their own way excluded from society, but with so much to offer – just because the reality-contest format demands it, especially when the show doesn’t implement that format very effectively anyway. Worlds Apart has something precious at its core but is too contrived to let it blossom. Niceness only gets you so far.
Worlds Apart is on Channel 4 now
AloJapan.com