This initial series is hosted by Dermot O'Leary, with assistance from the anonymous racing driver character The Stig, who had previously featured on BBC Two's motoring show Top Gear.

Speaking on 8 January 2016 episode of the BBC's The One Show, O'Leary described the show as "Total Wipeout behind the wheel of a car meets Gogglebox - in the same way that when you watch Gogglebox, you see what people are like in their front room", "you get couples who supposedly love each other but you put them behind the wheel of a car and they speak to each other in the most intolerable way".

One Show presenter Rory Bremner described it as "Mr & Mrs meets Top Gear meets The Chase" The teams take turns to complete a timed obstacle course, laid out inside a small race track, part of which also serves as the course finish straight.

The obstacles are negotiated as follows: The fastest three automatically qualify for Round Two, the remaining two must compete in a playoff to decide which team is eliminated from the show.

The race ends when either The Stig passes the team, leaving them with whatever money they have won, or they reach the finish line, winning the £10,000 prize.

Radio Times described it as "fun family entertainment to drive away the January blues", adding the show, "which sees couples team up, row and give The Stig a run for his money, is a winner", however Matt Baylis in the Daily Express said that "the only viewers who could have stayed the course, I suspect, would have been TV critics or people forced to watch it while being interrogated in secret CIA prisons".

Michael Hogan of The Daily Telegraph noted that "the longer the show went on, the more its faults became apparent" and described the show as "slow, repetitive and unevenly paced" and feeling "like an over-stretched segment on Top Gear, TFI Friday or a bushtucker trial".