ABC’s Race Around The World has returned, this time with five contestants, a new weekly format and John Safran back in the judging chair. The reboot of the cult reality documentary series puts the focus on what happens when the travellers do not know where they will end up from one week to the next.
The new version is the kind of television that still knows how to pull viewers in because it promises the unfamiliar. Zan Rowe, who hosts the reboot, said the original series was like “an incredible door opening into a whole bunch of stories and ideas I had never imagined,” and that sense of discovery is what ABC is trying to recapture for a generation that may know the name but not the ride.
The original Race Around The World was a massive cult hit when it first ran in 1997, lasting two seasons and sending contestants around the world for 100 days. Every 10 days, they had to send back a documentary for viewers to judge from home, turning the series into a contest of travel, story sense and nerve. The reboot keeps the idea of contestants making films, but the structure is tighter and more immediate: the five new entrants will not know their destination week by week.
Episode one brought back more than nostalgia. Claudia Karvan and Margaret Pomeranz were the guest judges for the opening week, with Pomeranz delivering a sharply critical assessment of the first films. Their presence signals that ABC is not treating the new version as a simple replay of the old one, but as a show that still wants opinionated judging to carry real weight.
Safran’s return gives the revival its sharpest edge. He is back as a judge despite being famously disqualified in the original series for using hidden camera footage, before later going on to win the popular audience vote. That history hangs over the reboot and makes his return hard to miss, even if the format around him has changed.
For ABC, the immediate test is not whether the new Race Around The World can mimic 1997. It is whether the weekly destination twist, the rotating guest judges and the mix of old names and new contestants can keep the series feeling unpredictable after the launch episode. The first instalment has answered one question already: the show is back. The harder one is whether it can keep its sense of discovery once the novelty of the return fades.
