In praise of: The Amazing Race Australia

I love Channel 10’s The Amazing Race Australia. It airs twice a week, on Monday and Tuesday nights, and is must see TV for me.

I love the joyful exuberance of the show and of its premise. To see these teams of Australians, from all walks of life (this season’s cast is particularly exemplary when it comes to representation, particularly the way it is presented as effortless), race around the world through all these amazing locations, is great entertainment. The depiction of happy, competitive, and excitable couples on screen exploring and achieving is nothing short of heart-warming. In this season, the teams are truly from all walks of life, from the newly married gay couple through to the hijab wearing mother and daughter team from Western Sydney, along with the farmers from SA and a painful Instagram ‘influencer’ team as well.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the obvious shortcomings with the show’s premise. Parts of the world not in the broader Anglo-sphere (where most of the show’s racing takes place, presumably due to the relative costs of travel in such locations) are obviously as rich and complex and worthy of proper exploration as anywhere else, and some of the challenges featured in the show walk a fine line regarding cultural exploitation.

Having said that, the contestants are almost entirely (or at least presented to the audience to be) respectful and polite to locals and of cultural norms. A particularly lovely moment in this season came when the team consisting of two Anglican nuns essentially resigned themselves to elimination in order to spend some time in the DMZ between North and South Korea, arguing that to fail to properly acknowledge the region and its significance was a far greater loss than to be sent home from the show.

I know that makes me seem like a sap, but I really do love the spirit of the show. It lacks the knowing cynicism of most reality tv (think MAFS or The Bachelor) that, whether knowingly or not, encourage at least some segment of its audience to sneer at its characters and premise.

Check it out. If nothing else, it might give you some good travel ideas!