[1] The competition series, hosted by Rich Eisen, features three two-person teams each week who are dropped "into the middle of their own epic action/adventure movie" and competing for a cash prize.

[4] TNT ordered a pilot episode of The Great Escape from Imagine Entertainment in November 2010, with both Ron Howard and Brian Grazer serving as executive producers, and was considered an initial foray into the reality television market for the network.

[5] Bertram van Munster and Elise Doganieri, the creators of The Amazing Race, were added as executive producers in mid-2011, prior to casting and filming of the pilot.

[6] Subsequently, in January 2012, TNT announced that it has greenlit ten episodes (only airing nine of them) of The Great Escape, stating that the program has "all the heart-pounding excitement and nail-biting suspense of a summer popcorn movie".

[7] The show was produced as to create an experience for the players and the audience of being inside a movie; Howard noted that the elements of clues and puzzle-solving bring to mind his earlier films, The Da Vinci Code and Apollo 13.

Production arrives about a week before filming to prepare the area and create any necessary props for the challenge or the course; in the case of the bayou, homemade shacks were constructed for the starting point for the teams.

[8] Each episode is a single competition among three teams of two contestants with a previous relationship, such as family relations, lifelong friends, or married or dating couples.

After completing four stages, the teams will need to assemble the Great Escape Key to identify their final destination and reach a "Transport Zone" to be taken to this place.

Green was at the Transport Zone trying to figure out the final destination and Blue was still inside The Institution when it was announced that the Red team had won.

Teams started the escape tied up within one of the abandoned planes, and had to find their map and a black light flashlight that identified a panel to exit from.

Location: Swamp in Des Allemands, Louisiana[20] Teams: Results: Red wins with Green and Blue finishing second and third respectively.

Location: One World Trade Center in Long Beach, California[22] Teams were tied by their ankles and confined in ventilation ducts at the top of the skyscraper.

Red had just left the Transport Zone's dumpsters and Blue was just completing Stage 3's labyrinth of security lights when the announcement of Green winning occurred.

[26] The first episode had received approximately 1.6 million viewers, but lost nearly half of those by the season finale, facing competition from other shows on Sunday night in the summer block; in comparison, TNT's dramas such as The Closer and Major Crimes had viewerships in excess of 7 million through the summer and were the highest watched shows for the network.