Mandarin Film worked together with Studio Lambert, an award-winning British TV production

company, to produce an original travel documentary program, “Race Across the World”. The series has since won the 2020 BAFTA TV Award for Best Reality and Constructed Factual Category.

In this series, 6 teams of British contestants travel from London, through Europe, and into Asia, to race to their final destination, Singapore. Their journey shows the history, sights, local cuisine, and culture of each country they pass through along the way.

Mandarin Film took on producing the China segment of “Race Across the World”. We helped research potential interesting stories, and obtained location permits across Gansu, Shan’Xi, Sichuan, and Guangxi Provinces.

Not your standard travel documentary, this British reality show is known for being “unscripted”. Producers cannot pre-plan routes or schedule shoots beforehand like on a usual travel program. Instead, the contestants were the “bosses”, where they wanted to go, the film crew followed.

The uncertainty of at what time and by which route the contestants would arrive posed the biggest challenge to our producers. We had to be prepared for every possible path and be flexible with last minute changes. Acting on the contestants’ decisions, we needed to make logistical arrangements and contact locations quickly to keep the filming running smoothly.

After 8 adrenaline-packed exciting days, contestant Joshua Nawras declared, “China is the best country we’ve been to so far!”