An awful lot of wasted potential, but worth a watch if you can ignore some major technical and format issues.
This is the record of a truly epic round-the-world adventure in three vehicles by a team of seven people raising money for charity. What could have been a documentary series as exciting as the journey itself is let down by terrible quality audio and video, rushed editing, too few episodes with too short running times (13 x 20 minutes), and an amateurish narration that sounds like a 19-year-old dude recording in his bedroom on a headset gaming mic with the volume set way too low.
A shame, because if you can ignore the poor quality, the material was all there to make a really top-notch travel/adventure series.
Whoever it was that decided the episodes should only be 20 minutes long was a fool, because they clearly filmed enough to make 20 or more episodes of at least 40 minutes to an hour - which would have allowed far greater scope for narrative storytelling and drawing the viewer in, rather than what we have here which is essentially a check-list of places visited.
I nearly gave up on it after the first 5 episodes because it was so rushed. But it either settled down into a more sensible pace by episode 6, or else I'd simply made sufficient mental adjustments to cope.
It's worth noting that this series was made by a chap called Adam Burgess, who went on to make a far more technically competent show in a similar vein six years later called "Wreck Trek" which addressed many of my issues with Odyssey and was much better, despite not covering so much of the world. A lot of reviewers hated "Wreck Trek" because the adventurers featured were so annoying and incompetent, but personally I found it thrilling to watch, and as enjoyable as an extended and more hardcore version of a Top Gear special.
By contrast, although Odyssey covered way more time and distance as an adventure, as a viewing experience it was quite limp and tame. However, I'm glad I saw it, and don't feel that my time was wasted. But I'm unlikely to watch it again, whereas I've already re-watched "Wreck Trek" a couple of times, and plan to watch it again.
This is the record of a truly epic round-the-world adventure in three vehicles by a team of seven people raising money for charity. What could have been a documentary series as exciting as the journey itself is let down by terrible quality audio and video, rushed editing, too few episodes with too short running times (13 x 20 minutes), and an amateurish narration that sounds like a 19-year-old dude recording in his bedroom on a headset gaming mic with the volume set way too low.
A shame, because if you can ignore the poor quality, the material was all there to make a really top-notch travel/adventure series.
Whoever it was that decided the episodes should only be 20 minutes long was a fool, because they clearly filmed enough to make 20 or more episodes of at least 40 minutes to an hour - which would have allowed far greater scope for narrative storytelling and drawing the viewer in, rather than what we have here which is essentially a check-list of places visited.
I nearly gave up on it after the first 5 episodes because it was so rushed. But it either settled down into a more sensible pace by episode 6, or else I'd simply made sufficient mental adjustments to cope.
It's worth noting that this series was made by a chap called Adam Burgess, who went on to make a far more technically competent show in a similar vein six years later called "Wreck Trek" which addressed many of my issues with Odyssey and was much better, despite not covering so much of the world. A lot of reviewers hated "Wreck Trek" because the adventurers featured were so annoying and incompetent, but personally I found it thrilling to watch, and as enjoyable as an extended and more hardcore version of a Top Gear special.
By contrast, although Odyssey covered way more time and distance as an adventure, as a viewing experience it was quite limp and tame. However, I'm glad I saw it, and don't feel that my time was wasted. But I'm unlikely to watch it again, whereas I've already re-watched "Wreck Trek" a couple of times, and plan to watch it again.
