Nathan Fillion

Think the ’Amazing Race’ mixed with ’Rat Race’ - but with much higher stakes

Hot on the wheels of intense, adrenaline-pumping shows like Prison Break and 24 comes the new drama action/adventure show, Drive, debuting Friday night.

Drive follows a mixed group of Americans competing in an illegal cross-country road race. The prize is tempting $32 million. The hook is that each person involved in the race - some of whom are competing against their will - is also racing for his or her own very personal reason; in many cases those reasons are much more compelling ones that just the $32 million. The catch, of course, is that there can only be one winner.

Contenders include two brothers in a stolen car, a man in search of his missing wife, and a scientist and his teen daughter. None know whom they’re racing against or where the finish line is, and are given step-by-step instructions and clues on where to go next.

Tim Minear, writer of hit series like Firefly and Angel, has teamed up with Fox to produce and create this thriller. And if the concept sounds familiar, it is; the show is inspired by the 70’s flick, The Gumball Rally, though it delivers a more intense, edge-of-your-seat experience.

“The game isn’t just a race. It’s also a web that starts to connect some of these characters together,” said Minear. “And what we start to discover is that there may be connections prior to the race happening. But really they’re all on this journey together [...] and alliances will form, and romances will happen, and there will be betrayals. So they’re really connected by the action. But they all have a reason why they need to win, but only one can.”

Maintaining the essence of Drive, the setting will mostly be on the road. Considering all the in-car time the actors will have, it seems logical that a requisite for the show would be possessing above-par driving skills. Or at least a driver’s license. Interestingly series director and executive producer Greg Yaitanes says no.

“The series uses cutting-edge, new technology to create these virtual environments. So we do all the driving work without ever taking the cars and people on the road,” said Yaitanes. “In order to end on schedule, we’ve created a whole new way of doing things, to do all the driving stuff so that we can always preserve performance and always keep the excitement.”

Ironically, many of the cast members get jittery behind the wheel in real-life and view driving against a green screen for the show as a relief. “I learned to drive three years ago because I had a terrible phobia of driving,” said star Melanie Lynskey.

“I was in a terrible car accident when I was two years old...I shouldn’t have been driving in the first place,” joked series front man Nathan Fillion. The Canadian-born actor admitted that Los Angeles driving terrified him at first but has now learned to leave early and go slow.

Drive is not the first project that Minear and Fillion have collaborated on. Firefly fans will recognize Fillion as Captain ‘Mal’ Reynolds from the short-lived sci-fi series, a cult favourite, and later the feature film, Serenity.

The participants on Drive begin the race at the southernmost point in the United States, but no one knows where it ends. With no idea who their competition is or who is behind the game, contestants embark on a labyrinth of intrigue, danger, mystery and twists and turns, and that’s not just the terrain.

“Part of the game is, if you get pulled over [...] you can’t explain what you were doing. If you start to tell the police what you’re doing, then you’re disqualified,” explained Minear. “It’s also structured in such a way that if you were to go to the police and try to rat this thing out, they would laugh at you.”

The elaborate game, run by shady, anonymous organizers thickens with every episode, but will viewers ever uncover these shadowy masterminds? Or will they be stuck wondering what the heck is going on a la Lost?

“There are actually two tiers to what’s going on behind the curtain and how that works,” Minear revealed. “There really is a whole other world to explore with other characters who are interacting in a different way, but I don’t want to say manipulating the people in the cars, but that are either allied or working against certain teams in certain cars.”

Drive premières tonight at 8 p.m. ET on CTV; Sunday, 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox