Fans of adventure games, this Thursday is a Christmas present a few days late that M6 is offering you. The channel launches, at 9:10 p.m., “Destination X”, an adaptation, produced by ITV Studios France, of a Belgian format, which refreshes the codes of this television genre and proves addictive. Explanations.
This spring, at MIPTV in Cannes, the major international meeting for audiovisual professionals, everyone was talking about “Bestemming X”. This concept, from Dutch-speaking Belgium, was created by the production company Geronimo and, broadcast in February, allowed the VTM channel to reach up to 42% audience share of the commercial target. “Five countries have acquired the adaptation rights, including the United States, but we are the first to have positioned ourselves even before its broadcast,” says Pierre-Guillaume Ledan, deputy general director of programs in charge of streaming programs at M6. The latter says he had “an immediate crush”.
The public knows nothing about the bus route
The idea, on paper, is promising: ten candidates board a bus with obscured windows. They don’t know where they are going to be taken. This is precisely the aim of the game: in each episode, they must try to guess the final destination of the day. To do this, they must be attentive to the clues disseminated by production (while paying attention to false leads) and glean others by winning outdoor tests which also allow them to get an idea of the environment. (nature, architecture, etc.) of the European country in which they are located…
At the end of each episode, participants place a marker on a map to mark where they think the bus is. The one furthest from the exact location of the vehicle is eliminated immediately. The eliminations follow one another over the weeks and the big winner will win 50,000 euros.
Viewers don’t know anything about the candidates’ journey to the menu. This adds an undeniable flavor to “Destination ‘most insightful Internet user). HAS 20 minuteswe saw the first three episodes, and indeed, we quickly got into the game.
The ten candidates are above all players
The revelation of the day’s destination provides its share of emotion. We can even speak of the “Keyzer Söze effect”, since, as at the end of the film Usual Suspectswe think back to all the clues that were before our eyes throughout the episode – which we hadn’t necessarily paid attention to – and we are led to reconsider everything we have seen so far, promising ourselves that Next time we will concentrate more.
This playful dimension is one of the big assets of “Destination X”, just like the casting. The show spares us the moods of parents wanting to “make proud” their children and other participants seeking to resolve a personal trauma or prove things to themselves through “the thrill of adventure”. The ten candidates (six men and four women on the starting line) are above all players, who like to solve puzzles and develop strategies less to crush the others than to put the greatest chance on their side of finding the right answers. .
M6 plays big
Everyone also has a certain general culture, at least enough to know the existence of Andorra and to know how to locate European countries on a map. Everyone plays to win, but cohabitation within the bus is not governed by clans looking at each other like china dogs. Without wanting to offend the candidates of other adventure games, we are obliged to recognize that these profiles are refreshing and endearing enough that we wait to see them again the following week.
“We hope that this program will be in line with our major brands,” confided Pierre-Guillaume Ledan last month at a press conference. For M6, the issue of “Destination X” arises there. After the audience failures of several launches in recent months (“The Road to the Safes”, “Love at the End of the World”, etc.), the channel, which has invested a lot in this concept, is playing big and hopes to be able to impose a new flagship show on its schedule. This adventure game could well succeed in getting as many people on board as possible (on its bus).