Race Across The World, BBC2

At first, when you get a call telling you that four teams of your contributors and their embedded crews are on a Kazakh ferry that has dropped anchor in the Caspian Sea due to high winds, you thank the TV gods – just the drama we want.

Four days later, when they haven’t moved and are running out of food and water, you think that’s probably enough drama and start wondering about their health and safety, and the budget.

Race Across The World was a truly epic and ambitious commission, which took five pairs of ordinary people on a 12,000-mile race from London to Singapore.

The rules were simple: the competitors couldn’t take any flights, or use a smartphone or credit card. Each contestant only had the cash equivalent of a one-way economy air fare to their destination to pay for everything – travel, food and accommodation.

As cabin fever set in on the Caspian Sea, there was one small comfort: we were definitely fulfilling the brief to make the series feel like it was running off the rails.

Having been involved in the early years of The Apprentice and the first series of The Voice UK and Strictly Come Dancing, I know there is nothing quite like being part of a big scary project to give you sleepless nights.

From the moment Studio Lambert told me about Race Across The World, I desperately wanted to be involved. To the BBC’s credit, it stood by its desire to commission something with scale and ambition. It really was a leap into the unknown.

We wanted our contributors to feel that they had free agency in all their decisions. All they had to do after leaving London was hit five checkpoints – Delphi in Greece; the capital of Azerbaijan, Baku; Tashkent in Uzbekistan; the ancient Chinese town Huangyao; and a small island in Cambodia, Koh Rong – before they reached the finish line in Singapore.

How they made their journey was up to them. This meant, as a production, we had to react to their decisions, however nonsensical. It was a nightmare for production management, as the competing contributors decided how and where to go. You cannot underestimate how challenging the journey could be at times.

At the second checkpoint in Baku, we’d planned for the teams to make a spectacular 1,400ft ascent in the country’s only funicular to reach the imposing Flame Towers.

However, we discovered it had broken down a day before our arrival and would be closed indefinitely. Still, I suppose it was character-building to repeatedly climb those steps to the top with the teams as they raced to the checkpoint.

Sitting on a hard seat on a cramped third-class train for more than 40 hours was also a killer, but out of such experiences came some warm and inspiring interactions with locals who were keen to show how proud they were of their country and generously explain their local customs.

One of our challenges was trying to shoot narrative GVs to ensure the series didn’t feel claustrophobic.

We had a DoP and a series director following all our teams. Not only did they shoot those big sweeping drone shots that capture the beauty and scale of their surroundings, but also the on-the-ground shots that convey the hustle and bustle of travelling, so viewers would feel immersed in the competitors’ journeys.

Setting the rules

Before the shoot, we sent two intrepid APs to do the whole journey as a research trip, mainly so we could prove it could be done in the 50 days our filming budget would allow, and that the travel would cost no more than an economy one-way airfare – about £1,300.

We had to apply for visas for all conceivable routes and research every likely bus and train option, cost and connection. We drew up protocols that set rules for how the teams could hitchhike, travel at night and cross borders safely.

Even then, just when we thought we’d thought of everything, we had to contend with a landslide in Vietnam closing down the railway for 16 hours, and a tropical storm in Singapore just hours before the teams were due to arrive, meaning the expensive drone operators couldn’t fly their drones.

It was a wild, wild time and an incredible adventure. I would do it all again in a heartbeat.