Mel Giedroyc oversees reality road trip for Discovery Real Time

The team behind BBC Three’s Don’t Tell The Bride are now hitting the road as they follow hopeless learner drivers as they’re taught to master the roads by long-suffering friends and family.

Driving Me Crazy is an eight-part reality road trip series with a twist. As if getting to grips with road positioning, clutch control and parallel parking wasn’t enough, the learners and their amateur instructors will have to do it on a five-day, 150-mile road trip in a classic Volkswagen campervan – all 15 foot and 2 tonnes of it!

At the end of the trip, if they’ve managed to avoid killing a pedestrian or each other, the learners will take a specially designed driving test to find out just how successful their venture has been.

Airing on Discovery Real Time the hopeless learners are taught to drive by their long-suffering friends and family who are desperate to get them off their hands and onto the road. But it’s not your average driving lesson…

This is a make-or-break driving experience, testing not only driving ability, but also family and friendship bonds to breaking point. The route they are set takes them through a variety of challenging terrains that get tougher as the week progresses. This pushes our learners’ burgeoning skills and their amateur instructors’ patience to the absolute limit resulting in moments of pure chaos, several close encounters and laugh-out-loud bits by the bucket load.

“Narrated by Mel Giedroyc this is television’s ultimate relationship road trip. Is there hope for these hapless learners? How will they cope with the mother of all driving tests? There will be bumps, breakdowns and total meltdowns as we discover if our learners are on the road to glory or just driving themselves crazy.” DRT say.

In the opening episode, can feisty 23-year-old pharmacy assistant Emma take instructions from laidback boyfriend Matt and learn to drive in just five days? She manages to keep her heated temperament in check when it’s her partner who is the instructor but will mild mannered fridge engineer Matt rise to the challenge and teach her the rules of the road?

Also in this episode, 33-year-old housewife Margie relies on best mate 35-year-old Charlotte Traynor for lifts most days of the week. However Charlotte wants to reclaim her life by teaching Margie to drive. But she’ll have to rebuild Margie’s confidence on the road after having already failed one driving test. Prepare for crunching gears, dodgy map reading and bad breakdowns – both inside and outside the campervan!
Driving Me Crazy airs on Tuesdays from 17th May 2012 at 10.00pm on Discovery Real Time.
[Written by Mike Watkins]