Race Across the World is one of the few shows I watch on terrestrial telly these days (can’t risk those spoilers), so I’m thrilled it’s coming back next week. Here’s why I love it so much…

The wanderlust

This year’s East Asia route sounds incredible, taking in China, Nepal and India and covering a distance of 14,000km. The groups will start in Beijing at The Great Wall of China and their first checkpoint will be Huangling County, in the north of Shaanxi province in China, while the finish line is located at Kanniyakumari, on the southernmost tip of India. I’ve already got itchy feet about all the places it will make me want to visit.

The contestants

My boyfriend and I recently spent an afternoon rating every person we know on who would be the best race partner (for the sake of all my relationships I’ll keep the results to myself). It’s the dynamics within each pairing, and the journeys (literally and figuratively) they go on throughout the series, that make the show particularly compelling. This year the brilliant line-up features sisters Elizabeth and Letitia; formerly married couple Yin and Gaz; brothers Brian and Melvyn; teenage couple Fin and Sioned; and mother and son Caroline and Tom.

I suspect none of them would choose me as their race partner.

The potential for getting involved

I don’t mean actually getting on a Flix bus for 32 hours – these fidgety legs couldn’t cope – but the best type of involvement: from the comfort of my sofa. I love to loudly verbalise my unsubstantiated opinions on whether they should take the cheap cross-country route or go via a buzzing but expensive metropolism, and asking them why they’re not running faster or stopping more (or less)!

“Ever since he first stepped onto our screens in 2018, You’s Joe Goldberg has been presented as the ultimate antihero: articulate, obsessive, self-pitying – and a serial killer. But, with the final season due to land on Netflix this week, the stakes are bigger than ever before,” says Kayleigh. 

“For the past seven years, we’ve seen Penn Badgley’s character granted a deeply dubious ‘sex symbol’ status (much to the actor’s horror). It’s not just due to his boyish good looks, quiet humour and love of books, though; it’s because Joe has always been radically honest about his darkest impulses. Hell, he has talked us through every single one of his crimes with an almost confessional intimacy – and he has never shied away from the fact that he is a monster.

“It’s made him compelling, no doubt about it. But in 2025, amid rising real-world violence against women and the radicalisation of young men via red-pill ideology, shows like You can no longer flirt with moral ambiguity. Letting a ‘romantic’ predator like Joe walk away from his crimes unscathed doesn’t just send the wrong message; it’s downright irresponsible.

“This final chapter is a chance to reject the all-too-predictable redemption arc and make a bolder statement. Because Joe isn’t a tragic hero – he’s a mirror. And if the show is brave enough to smash it, maybe the culture will start to shift too.”