FFor reasons that aren’t always clear, celebrities love taking part in strange challenges on TV: eating live spiders; falling backwards out of a helicopter into open water; chasing ghosts with Rylan Clark. In fact, there are so many of these shows that it can be hard to remember what some of these celebrities were doing before they entered the British TV challenge circuit. Was she on Gogglebox? Did he do Towie? Why are they now stumbling around in pitch darkness in an underground bunker with Chris Eubank and Danny Dyer? That’s anyone’s guess. And so it goes.

Now to the Celebrity Race Across the World, which – although it Sounds like many of the above – is very different. Yes, there are celebrities. And yes, they do something weird on TV. In this case, they’re trying to get from northern Brazil to southern Chile, two at a time, with no smartphones or bank cards and just £36 cash a day. But it’s a lot less eye-rolling and a lot more wholesome than it sounds. It’s not about watching C-list celebs from reality shows get grumpy jungle veterans because they can’t get balayage done. Just like the civilian version, you’ll find that you care about these people and help them succeed.

Each couple appears to be taking part in the show for personal reasons. TV presenter Jeff Brazier, 45, wants to spend more time with his teenage son Freddie. As they’ve gotten older and busier, they’ve become a little estranged. At 19, Freddie isn’t sure who he is or wants to become. He hopes this will help him figure it out. “I want you to make decisions for yourself, rather than just going with the flow like you normally do,” Jeff tells his son. Later, Freddie speaks to the camera. “At the moment I’m trying to figure out what I want to do with my life,” he says. “It’s quite difficult. Who is Freddie Brazier? I don’t know.”

For presenter Kelly Brook, 44, and her husband Jeremy Parisi, 39, it’s about doing something out of the ordinary. Kelly says she is often portrayed as a super-glamorous pin-up girl who does calendar shoots, but says: “It’s all an illusion; that’s not who I am at all. Kelly Brook doesn’t actually exist!” For BBC Radio 2 DJ Scott Mills, 51, and his then-fiancé and now-husband Sam Vaughan, 35, the show was a chance to take on a big challenge before the wedding. And for actor Kola Bokinni, 32, and his cousin Mary-Ellen, it’s a chance to go on an adventure together. “We’ve always wandered through life together but his career is really taking off so I don’t see him that much anymore,” says Mary-Ellen, who grew up with Kola on a housing estate in Peckham, south-east London. “To go on this adventure together… will be amazing.”

The couples make their way through backpacker hostels, 14-hour bus rides and hikes through grassy fields in sweltering heat. But some of the most touching moments are the small and unexpected ones: Freddie clutching a shivering chicken to his chest, eyes squeezing tightly shut in joy and fear; Kelly wading through brackish water between mangroves, helping plant new seedlings in the rain; Kola and Mary-Ellen diving into the cool desert lagoons that have temporarily formed between sand dunes in Lençóis Maranhenses National Park in Maranhão, northeastern Brazil. Like all good reality travel shows, you’ll wonder if you could, too. There’s a reason travel agents saw a boom after the show’s recent surge in popularity. Seeing nature on screen will make you want to reach out and touch it.

Of course, this being entertainment, many elements seem pre-arranged and pre-planned. Each team appears to be housed in different family homes, and the race to the first checkpoint is so close that it’s hard to help but suspect it was at least partly staged. But this is television, and if everyone was left to their own devices with no help behind them, who knows where they’d end up. It certainly wouldn’t set the pulse racing as much as it does. “Come on, give me your bag,” Jeremy gasps, the sound of stabbing string instruments blaring in the background as Kelly races down a cobbled street in harem pants. You’ll be sitting on the sofa, white-knuckled, as if their lives depended on them reaching that checkpoint.

In this era of endlessly recycled formats and a growing disillusionment with the concept of ‘celebrity’ in general, it’s easy to become cynical about the idea of ​​radio presenters and actors putting themselves through the wringer to prove they’re just like us. Yet Celebrity Race Across the World has an unusually calming and warming effect on the heart. It helps that they’ve chosen a cast of genuinely likable people. There are no villains, no egos hiding beneath the false modesty that people dealing with fame usually display. Rather, this is about people finding themselves and each other while experiencing things they wouldn’t normally experience. And it’s absolutely, wonderfully compelling.

Celebrity Race Across the World aired on BBC One and is available on BBC iPlayer.