Thanks Plaidmoon for your great introduction!
I think you captured it all in a nutshell so great job on that!
The subtitled promos were basically subtitled by me though.
Yes 'Peking Express' can be seen as a variation on TAR.
It's not quite the same but there are 'intersections' ( in TAR terms
) i.e. there are similarities as well as differences.
The show is originally Dutch- Belgian in fact. Now it seems we have both a French as well as a Dutch series in 2012.
In a nutshell, contestants get €1,- per day to hitchhike to given destinations, where they are supposed to perform challenges.
Usually (if previous series are an indication for this one anyway) not the kind of jumping out of airplanes.
Mostly the challenges involve thinking on your feet, interacting with the locals and integrating/learning from their culture.
This way you get to see interesting parts of the country's culture you wouldn't 'usually' see when passing by as a tourist or even on a TAR race.
The contestants have to find their own shelter to stay overnight as well as food. Which makes you appreciate the differences in culture or even just luck of the draw.
So it's not so much about hopping onto an earlier flight as it is about be
arranging the right transportation by themselves in an unknown environment with a language/culture barrier, using people skills, linguistic skills or simply being smart about how to hitch the next ride to where you are going.
In previous series there has been a NEL every other episode (i.e. each two episodes 1 duo gets eliminated) , hence only 7 duos (and 8 in the French series).
Basically this show has the same elements TAR has, and then some, in terms of the pressure being on on the contestants dealing with a low budget to make it all the way through.
Oh and yeah, they are in a RACE! Against each other.
So basically the same as TAR though bringing slightly different elements to the mix..
As Plaidmoon said you could all see the episodes by means of the links to them.
I would be willing to provide subtitled promos as well as recapping the episodes wrt the main events.
If anyone has any additional questions or would like to know more about a certain part I could fill in and explain, no problem.
Please do let us know if you would be interested in watching this.
If so, I will continue translating promos and posting links (to the actual episodes, to be viewed online) with recaps on the episodes so you would know what is going on in general, also monitoring and answering any questions you might have.
Here are the two previously mentioned promos with subtitles
http://www.youtube.com/v/du-ShJFGiBM http://www.youtube.com/v/biwbKTqdLeM