Murderous fun: its Agatha Christie on steroids
TV
The Traitors
BBC iplayer
★★★★★
The first series of The Traitors was a word-of-mouth hit that sounded ropey on paper – a glorified game of “wink, murder” hosted by a high-camp Claudia Winkleman – but turned out to be insanely entertaining. Winkleman said in an interview over the weekend that she had told the BBC, “Let’s not do another,” because series one was perfect. Here we are with series two.
The format and location are unchanged. Twenty-two contestants gather at a castle in the Scottish Highlands. Three are secretly chosen to be Traitors, tasked with bumping off the others – known as Faithfuls – one by one. This involves creeping about at night in a big cloak like the woman from the Scottish Widows adverts. The Faithfuls must use their intuition and deduction skills to weed out the Traitors.
Is it as good as series one? It can’t be, because everyone – viewers and contestants – knows what to expect now. Three thousand people applied for the first series and 180,000 for this one. A certain element of surprise has gone.
But a little of the original magic disappears when the competitors walk into the castle for the first time and shriek “ohmygod” and “wow” because they recognise rooms they’ve seen on the telly. “I think I was more starstruck at the castle than seeing Claudia,” says one.
Some of the players also feel as if they’ve been hired from reality TV central casting; I’m thinking of Aubrey, flamboyant in a fedora, who lives with a cat called Luther Vandross and declares at the outset: “Everybody’s going to love me but I’ll throw people under the bus at the flip of a hat.” Aubrey, darling: the Big Brother auditions are that way.
Yet the formula is a winning one and this is a show that builds excitement with each episode. The first three episodes are available on iplayer, and by the end we’ve had it all: ruthless backstabbing, paranoia and a decent twist (some of the competitors are more than they seem).
Winkleman is great, playing along but never taking it too seriously. From a psychological point of view, it’s always interesting to watch people at work in games like this: the herd mentality, and the fact that nine times out of 10 their intuition points them to the wrong person. Mind you, one of the contestants is a clairvoyant who will be asking for guidance from the spirit world, so let’s see if that helps.
Strong characters to emerge in the first episode include business manager Paul, ex-soldier Jonny and avid knitter Sonja. The 22 are a mix of team players and those clearly out for themselves.
Most make the mistake of nominating people whom they dislike or perceive to be acting suspiciously, rather than working out which ones the producers would be most likely to pick as traitors.
I’ve always been a tad suspicious of their ability to complete the physical tasks within the allotted time-frame. In the first episode, their mission involved swimming in a loch and piecing together a giant puzzle; they seemed hopeless, yet pulled it off with seconds to spare. I’m sure the producers wouldn’t fix the results, though. Maybe watching this show just makes viewers doubt everything they see?
The production company behind this, Studio Lambert, also produced Netflix’s recent show Squid Game: The
Challenge. In terms of betrayal and nail-biting tension, that gave The
Traitors a run for its money. But it was very American. The Traitors, despite being a Dutch format, seems beautifully British thanks to the locations, the casting and Winkleman’s presence. “Faithfuls, you are currently sharing marmalade with murderers,” she tells them over breakfast. It’s Agatha Christie on steroids.
‘The formula is a winning one and this is a show that builds excitement with each episode’ ‘Some of the players also feel as if they’ve been hired from reality TV central casting’