Refreshingly, the focus is on teamwork rather than treachery – the groups compete in isolation and have been carefully selected to make them easy to root for.

Quite apart from the prize fund for this game show (up to £1 million per pair), the budget is eye popping: it must be the best-looking reality show to date, beginning in the Scottish Highlands but, across eight episodes packed with Bond motifs both visual and aural, moving to the Alps, Venice, Rio and beyond.

His adversaries: nine pairs of friends or family members, each facing 10 challenges and trivia questions of increasing difficulty, set in ever more exotic locations. From Hannibal Lecter to Logan Roy, Brian Cox has played some truly unforgettable villains, but in this new reality show, he gets one of the big ones: with his wall of video screens, wry quips and ominous nickname (“the Controller”), his puppet-master is clearly a Bond villain in all but name.