Jet Lag: The Game

What’s The Show? A first for this blog – a YouTube series, Jet Lag: The Game

What’s It All About, JG? It’s a travel competition, starring Sam Denby, Adam Chase, and Ben Doyle. Each season of the show centre around a different type of game – Tag, Connect Four, Capture The Flag, that sort of thing. These are played out over different geographical areas, so Connect Four involved capturing four American states in a diagonal or row as per the game, Tag involves trying to tag one of the other players while they each try to make their way to an end point somewhere in Europe. You get the idea. Tag has been done twice, actually – Tag Across Europe – but every other season has been unique in its gameplay. Sometimes the play area is a country, with the most recent series at time of writing playing out across Australia, sometimes it’s the whole planet, as with Race Around The World. Most seasons feature a guest of some description (except for the Tag seasons and Hide and Seek, which just feature the boys), with Ben and Adam comprising one team and Sam and whoever the guest is making up the other. The show is shot on iPhones, giving it an immediate, reportage, feel. In every iteration of the game, though, teams or individuals must complete tasks in order to earn money to allow them to travel. Thus it becomes a strategy of what you can earn and where you can go to secure the ultimate victory.

Why Did You Give It A Go? Because earlier in the year I was hospitalised and spent nearly a week there. During that delightful episode, my partner suggested that we give it a go to fill in some time. His recommendation became a minor obsession and not only did it get me through my bout in hospital, it became something we both completely binged out on. The most recent, Australian, series is the first one we’ve had to watch with a week – a whole bloody week! – between episodes.

Is It Any Good? It’s absolute great, in case the above paragraph didn’t quite give that away. I’ve never watched, or really even been aware of, a YouTube series before so this was really something of a revelation. And what makes the show so compulsively watchable are the three leads. The show’s main driver – not least because he pays for it – is Sam, a tall, blonde-haired bundle of energy who never seems to understand there’s anything that can’t be met with 100% enthusiasm. Adam is calm, structured and very much a still point, at least as far as Jet Lag has a still point. Ben is a laconic, relaxed, go-with-it sort of person that stops it all becoming too much. The three of them together are just gold.

That’s not to suggest that the gameplay isn’t crucial to how the show plays out, of course, because it obviously is. Jet Lag takes its inspiration from two primary sources – the travel-competition of The Amazing Race and the do-silly-things of Taskmaster. Both of these combined make for ridiculously addictive viewing. And because this is just shot on iPhone, with three or four people dashing about, the amateur angle of it gives it a charm and appeal that simply rings true. And when I say “amateur”, I don’t mean that as a slight. There’s obviously a huge amount of post-production, effects, graphics, sound editing and so on that goes into putting a show like this together. But when they’re actually out in the wild, there’s no camera crews, no teams of researchers, nobody at all – its just them, their wits, and a hefty dose of luck (good or bad). So what it ultimately comes down to is a group of people dicking about doing silly things to win random games played out over a massive canvas. It’s dynamite.

Because “dicking about” definitely isn’t a pejorative here either. Half the fun of the show is seeing what absurd tasks the boys are going to get stuck doing this time. Sometimes they’re fairly simple, sometimes they’re absurdly bizarre, but they’re almost always entertaining. Making mayo from scratch in a cardboard tub? Sure! Cutting a biscuit in half with a playing card? Yep. Memorising an incredibly silly song with a bajillion nameplaces? You know it! The tasks are almost all appealingly daft and in this you can very much see the influence of Taskmaster. This is, naturally, a compliment. It’s the tasks that really help the variety across so many seasons and it’s a great way of keeping the viewers engaged. They can be physical, mental, lateral, or whatever – they just help keep all the pieces moving.

The three personalities of the teams make a huge difference as well because while all are great, Sam, Ben, and Adam are definitely different types of people. Sam is controlled, very strategic and makes great efforts to game everything out to maximum effect. Adam is slightly tense and nervy, always concerned with getting a lead or one-up on the competition. And Ben is laconic and relaxed, willing to take chances on whatever he thinks will work at the time. The three of them work fantastically well together, alongside whatever random element is thrown in when a guest star comes along. And along them do come, a whole string of them throwing in their tuppence-worth to keep the seasons interesting and unpredictable. If either the guest stars or the core cast didn’t work the whole thing would collapse but – at least so far – that’s never been the case.

On paper, describing Jet Lag might not sound like much. A few guys run around large areas doing silly things for largely pointless rewards and reasons. The whole pleasure, though, is simply in relaxing back and watching it, enjoying every daft, unscripted, natural moment play out. Of course, it’s impossible not to take sides, have a secret favourite you really want to win (or indeed a secret not-favourite you really want to lose) and… well, it’s just impossible not to get caught up in it, basically. It’s incredibly addictive, compulsive viewing and just can’t be recommended enough.

How Many Of These Did You Watch? Every single episode, and I’ve started listening to the podcast too. It’s rather nice to hear the boys chatting away in a less pressured environment than the actual recording of the series, though one sometimes gets the impression Sam isn’t always thrilled to be doing a podcast. Ah well, it all adds to the fun!

Would You Recommend It? Well, yes, of course I would! There’s just about nothing I wouldn’t say works here. The early couple of seasons are a little wonky as the gameplay gets straightened out and everyone learns how to get things to work (Circumnavigation suffers a fair bit from this, especially) but once they hit their stride there’s just no stopping them. And even the, the early seasons aren’t bad, they’re just a little round around the edges, and are still well worth watching.

Another thing that’s worth mentioning is that, despite how simple the concept and show sometimes seems to be, it’s clear that a huge amount of work has gone on behind the scenes to pull everything together and make a compulsive viewing experience. Creating the tasks alone is mammoth tasks, striking a balance between something that’s meaningfully achievable, that will be fun to watch, and that will help to keep the gameplay moving. The amount of effort that goes into this is always clear, to say nothing of the game design itself. Because if the game design doesn’t land, the season isn’t going to land. And while it would be an exaggeration to say they get it 100% right 100% of the time, the misses are rare and never terrible, and the hits are simply spectacular. All the hard work, writing, creation, and effort that goes into the show ensures that even the silliest of moment still lands.

The variety of locations helps a great deal to keep things interesting as well. There’s been a few U.S.-based season, which makes sense since all three of the core cast are American, though the American seasons aren’t necessarily always the best. That’s because the boys are more challenged when they’re taken out of their familiar environment and put somewhere they can’t always predict how everything will work. And that’s not even about a language barrier – the New Zealand and Australian seasons also found the boys out of their element and as such just make for more interesting viewing. The lack of local knowledge also means everyone is on a much more even footing so there’s no real advantage to anyone – you succeed or fail on your own merits. That’s not to say the American seasons are bad, because they aren’t, but getting the team outside the U.S. can’t help but add an additional element to the way the seasons work.

What also helps a great deal is that the rapport between the core cast means that, however frustrated someone might get, however annoyed someone could be, things never tip over into being genuinely antagonistic. It’s clear that these are three people who genuinely like each other and that affinity is both incredibly sweet and means that the games always remain good-natured. In fact, it’s downright charming and everyone is always incredibly graceful in defeat as the big, fake trophy makes its way to whoever’s managed this season of daftness the best. There are plenty of moments of frustration, plenty of tension, plenty of “AAARRRGHHHH!” moments (lookin’ at you, Adam) but the sweet, rather adorable nature of the show never gets lost. Basically, this is just a fantastic show and you should go watch it now!

And I haven’t even mentioned The Snack Zone! Though, for obvious reasons, I haven’t mentioned Chew, Chew, Choo. Sorry, Sam.

Scores On The Doors? 8.5/10