Contestants felt like relatable characters. Often the audience would put themselves in the situation the contestants were in and work out how they would handle the challenge. For season two they had 40,000 applications! This was at least partly shot in South America, with all the attendant politics at the Border! In Season 1 there were countries that they couldn’t film in, quite a problem as the whole point of the show is to film people on the journey. They were unable to get into Turkmenistan. Not part of the show or Panel there is an interesting video on Turkmenistan:
Note: all these problems were not necessarily seen as bad by the crew, they to show real problems and how the contestants resolved them.
The show is authentic, real, and produced with a low technical budget. The Camera was a Sony A7 and it was edited, in a few days, on FCP.
The BBC (well BBC2) like these kind of shows and would welcome new series of this type. They are not afraid of the risks and they have the funds to commission some more.
Audience Questions: is there to be a local version? The answer was given in that it had to be Big and have Scale.