Inside the unlikely 90s ABC TV hit Race Around the World

It was on the Ivory Coast, 30 days into the first season of Race Around the World, that John Safran stumbled on the style that would define his career — a career still going strong nearly 30 years later.

Safran had taken a little time to find his feet on the ABC series — a documentary competition format that saw eight aspiring documentarians travel the world for 100 days producing 10 four-minute films that were then awarded points by a panel of judges.

"I was just thrown into this thing and had to work it out," explains Safran, who was working as an advertising copywriter when he applied for the show. "I just knew I wanted to do something odd or funny but I hadn't worked it out yet."

For his fourth effort he went around to various villages asking voodoo priests to put a curse on his ex-girlfriend. The resulting film was controversial, curious about religion, ironically self-obsessed and very funny. John Safran had found his schtick.

"That story just fell into place, almost like my whole life had been leading up to that," Safran says. "Before I went on the show, I hadn't thought about this whole genre of gonzo journalism, putting my personal stories into these themes that are so much bigger than me. And I feel like everything I've done since has been just some version of that."

Safran was the break-out star of the 1997 series and went on to have a successful career as a societal irritant and provocateur. He scuffled with Ray Martin in an ill-fated ABC pilot, baited Shane Warne with cigarettes for Seven's The Late Report, had a fatwa placed on Rove McManus on SBS's John Safran Versus God and squatted in Kanye West's LA mansion for his most recent book.

But every one of the eight competitors — none of whom had previous television experience — forged a career in the industry. It's a result few would have anticipated when the idea for the show was first presented.

Nationwide call out for contestants

Race Around the World was brought to the ABC by filmmaker Mike Rubbo, who became the ABC's head of documentaries after working in Canada for 20 years. It was a modest Canadian format that producer Paige Livingston shaped into something that would capture the imagination of the Australian public.

"People loved it," says Richard Fidler, who hosted the studio component of the show. "It was one of those really happy accidents in TV history."

There was a nationwide call out for contestants and the response exceeded all expectations. "The phone lines at the ABC were ringing hot," recalls Livingston. "The switchboard operators were going, 'What is this? And stop it!'" By then, an astonishing 25,000 people had requested application forms, although the application process quickly thinned the field.

"The application form was epic," explains Olivia Rousset, the eventual winner of the series. "It was like 10 pages of writing about yourself, what you thought of the world, ideas for short films. Then filming yourself telling a story on camera, then a piece to camera while you're walking or doing something, then a four-minute mini doc. It was massive."

Nevertheless, 1,345 people went through the arduous process and 44 of them were selected for an interview. The applicants were further whittled down to 16, who were then put through an intensive six-week training course at the Australian Film and Television School.

At the end of this, eight were selected — Safran, Rousset, Ben Davies, Daniel Marsden, Kim Traill, Claudia Rowe, Scott Herford and Bentley Dean.

"I was so stoked," recalls Marsden, who had returned from a job in London for the experience. "It was a mix of elation and pure terror."

Looking back, Livingston's only regret is how homogenous the casting was. "I think it wasn't a true representation of Australia," she says. "To do it again, which I hope some day they do, it would be more diverse, for sure."

'What could possibly go wrong?'

From the start, Race Around the World was a logistical nightmare. "Every single thing was, like, 10 times bigger than what we thought it was going to be," says Livingston.

Getting the eight contestants on their way with itineraries booked and visas secured was a task in itself but then they had to figure it out on their own. "We gave them, I think, $8,900 to plan their trip and we gave them $100 a day, and that was it," recalls Livingston.

That $100 had to cover accommodation and food as well as fixers and translators. Contestants had just 10 days from the moment they landed in a country to find a story, film it and write detailed instructions for the editors back in Australia.

"You could only use two 30-minute tapes to capture your story," Marsden explains. "We had to log our footage, do an edit script — you know, these are the pictures, these are the words — put them in a bag and just send it off. Like, some dude on a motorbike would come up and grab the bag and off he'd go. What could possibly go wrong?"

Doubt about the concept

On paper, Race Around the World looked like a bit of a mess, with its combination of travelogue, current affairs reporting and studio-based hosting and judging. "We just thought, a bunch of young people going around the world making shit films — who's going to watch that?" says Rousset.

Certainly, Fidler was unimpressed with the concept and initially declined an offer to host it. "I thought it was going to be a show about international niceness," Fidler says, "and I thought it was going to be ugly and boring."

Hoping to change his mind, Livingston showed him the audition tapes, including John Safran's, in which the 24-year-old interviewed a man who promoted the health benefits of drinking your own urine. At the end of the film, Safran joined him for a glass ("It was mine," Safran clarifies. "I'm not insane").

"When I saw that, I thought, 'oh, is that where we're going with this series?'," Fidler recalls. "And at that point I said yes to doing the show."

Bizarrely, Safran's wasn't the only audition video to involve urine. Rousset's was about a man who had been arrested for asking schoolgirls for samples of theirs. And it was Rousset's first film for the series that extinguished any fears Race Around the World would be an exercise in international niceness.

The film, titled The Money Shot, saw Rousset in Los Angeles on the set of a porn movie called Boob Watch 3.

"I was staying in the San Fernando Valley, which was where porn was made and distributed," Rousset recalls. "I thought maybe I'll find a young woman trying to break into the porn industry and that would be sort of a tragic story, like trying to show how exploitative the industry was."

Instead, she met a man, Chris, a pharmacist who was about to turn 30, had never done porn before and was hoping to break into the industry. "I said, 'Have you got any work yet?' And he said, 'Yeah, tomorrow, I've got my first one out in Malibu.' And I was like, 'Can I come?'"

Sadly for Chris he was unable to — as they say in the business — "get wood" and provide — as they also say in the business — "the money shot".

"It turned into a tragi-comedy," Rousset recalls. "It was like a gift of documentary moments for me and his worst nightmare. And it probably, to this day, is one of the only films that I've never sent to the person who was in it, because I don't think he'd want to see it. He lived it."

"You could see on her face as she was reporting it her powerful mixed feelings about what she was seeing," recalls Fidler. "She knew parts of it were unintentionally hilarious and nonetheless she was very alive also to the strangely awful cruelty of what she was witnessing. It was magnificent and I think it marked her out as the front runner right at the start."

A time before TikTok

Race Around the World was a surprise hit for the ABC. "There was a freshness and oddness to it that really captured people's imaginations," says Safran. It was parodied on the popular comedy series Full Frontal and the judges soon found themselves being stopped in the street.

"People felt like they should come and tell me what their opinions about my opinions were," says filmmaker David Caesar, whose assessments of the contestants' efforts could be withering. "People would often confront me in supermarkets and start abusing me for my what they felt like were my transgressions as a judge."

In many ways the show was ahead of its time. When Caesar gained a reputation as the mean judge, he was anticipating talent show judges such as Simon Cowell and Kyle Sandilands, although he would doubtless flinch at the comparison.

More importantly, the films themselves anticipated a video style that is now ubiquitous — short and personal with a DIY aesthetic. The kind of videos that flood social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and most obviously TikTok.

Twenty-seven years ago, the digital camcorders coming onto the market were small and light and revolutionised documentary making. They allowed the filmmakers to be unobtrusive and get incredibly intimate access, while the rotating screen allowed them to film themselves easily.

That last feature might have gone unused were it not for a rule that each film had to include at least two pieces to camera. That simple requirement gave the films a tone and style that was groundbreaking at the time but now feels instantly familiar.

"We could do video diaries and that just seemed totally unusual and exciting for an audience watching it back in Australia," explains Safran, whose self-conscious style fitted most comfortably with the requirement.

"Here were the initial little threads being formed for how storytellers on YouTube and social media and TikTok do their thing."

'We could have died'

Despite the show's title, it wasn't a race and none of the contestants ever really saw it as a competition. What it definitely was, however, was a health and safety nightmare.

"It was mad," says Safran. "Not only could we have died, we could have died and they didn't know about it."

Although the show's producers had to deal with plenty of late-night calls from teary contestants worried about stories falling over and missed deadlines, the contestants were only required to call in every 10 days.

"There were times where they may not have been in touch for eight or nine days," says Tony Squires, one of the show's regular judges. "And you could see in Paige, the producer, that concerned-parent look on her face. Just wondering where her lost children were."

"Stories would come in late and cameras would be lost and people would be sick and so many different things," Livingston says. "It definitely aged me."

"Occupational health and safety was the furthest thing from our minds," Rousset says. "I'm sure that was an issue for the ABC management, but we were in it for the adventure; we were in it for the risk. When you're in your 20s, you don't care or think about that stuff. That's for your parents to worry about. That's for the ABC to worry about."

Could it be done again?

Despite its popularity, Race Around the World only ran for two seasons before being downscaled to Race Around Oz and then a teen version called Race Around the Corner. The cost and logistics were just too much for a cash-strapped and risk-averse ABC.

What those two series did, though, was unearth a generation of filmmakers, editors and producers. Apart from the ABC series Hungry Beast, which aired a decade later and unearthed another generation of television talent, there's been nothing like it. And for that reason alone, it's sorely missed. But would a show like Race Around the World be possible today?

"I don't think Race Around the World would work just because of the way technology works now," says David Caesar: "You don't need to have access to a television station or whatever. You can go out with your mobile phone and film a story, edit it on the phone itself, and then broadcast it through YouTube or any of the other video sites."

Says Safran: "You watch something like the voodoo story and I think that just seemed very odd at the time, like oversharing things about your life. Now, everyone does it."

Fidler wonders whether the culture has changed too much. "I think that identity politics would be lathered over the whole thing," he says. "Like, should you have gotten that kind of person? Does that person have the right to tell that story? I think we live in a kind of culturally constipated moment that wouldn't want that."

Technological and cultural issues aside, perhaps the greatest hurdle to overcome would be administrative — insurers would run a mile. While the 1997 contestants regularly travelled through geopolitical hotspots, the world these days seems a more dangerous place and there is less appetite for risk. It's hard to imagine the ABC sending eight twenty-somethings out into the world alone with little more than a round of vaccinations and a day's self-defence training.

Would it be possible to make the series less of a health and safety nightmare while retaining the loose, anarchic edge that made it so engaging?

"I think the fact all that was required was for them to call in once every 10 days shows how much the culture has changed, particularly with young people," Fidler says. "I think there was an expectation then that to be young was to put yourself at risk; that to be creative was to put yourself at risk physically. We just don't have that anymore. Safety is now everywhere."

Rousset, however, remains optimistic. "Let's hope that we continue to give young people opportunities and encourage them to take risks, and that television takes risks and isn't focused on ratings. If they were focused on getting ratings for the ABC they never would have made a show like Race Around the World. There was no guarantee that it was going to work."

Watch Australian Story's 'The Shoot Out', 8:00pm, on ABCTV and ABC iview.