Viewer beware – The Traitors will doom Britain

The BBC show is brilliant fun – and provides its audience with a virtual masterclass in how to fib

The Traitors, which concludes on BBC One this week, is repellent and immoral, and a civilised society would ban it. I never miss an episode, of course. But I’m the kind of ghoul who would’ve occupied the front row at public executions (which the authorities stopped only because the punters were enjoying them too much).

The show takes 22 players, sticks them in a tacky castle and has them complete tasks for cash. The twist is that three are appointed “traitors” by the scary Claudia Winkleman – imagine if Lucifer had a fringe – and can “murder” the “faithful” contestants to increase their share of the winnings.

Every episode, the group tries to guess who is a traitor and vote them off. They usually get it wrong.

The Traitors inverts the sporting ethic – don’t work for the team but against it – and rewards duplicity. Nothing is sacred. “If you come for me, I’ll put you six feet under,” said a soldier who wears a cross-shaped earring. Last week, a retired teacher had her drink “poisoned” by a veterinary nurse and was buried alive – unsure of whether or not her son, who dropped a rose into her coffin, was the killer. One traitor, close to the win, said “if you want me to swear on anyone’s life, I will.” This man has children.

How things have changed. In the 1950s, the BBC sniffed at game shows as crass and American. Cash prizes were banned. Commercial TV had no such hangups and, in 1955, broadcast a Us-import called People Are Funny, in which Brits were invited to make fools of themselves for a handful of pound notes or a washing machine.

For instance, a woman was invited to smash up some crockery under a cloth, only to discover that it was her own. Another contestant, carrying a toy doll, approached a man at a bus stop and loudly announced that the baby was his.

The moral backlash was led by one Sir Leslie Plummer MP, his very name conjuring images of Victorian prudery. But Sir Les’s objection was noble: you are making fools of my constituents, he said. People are Funny was taken off air because the 1950s elite still cared about personal virtue. The public, on the other hand, queued around the theatre to audition, proving that folks will do anything to be on TV.

Since then, we’ve been sold formats that purport to be one thing but are really another. Big Brother was a “social experiment”; it ended in George Galloway mewing like a cat.

And no one watches The Apprentice to find out what those thrilling business plans are; one lady wanted to deliver Pick ‘n’ Mix to your door. No, we want to see candidates bitch and backstab in the boardroom.

The Traitors is simply the most honest version of all of that – the genre stripped to its ugly essentials – and its stars are clearly chosen for their credulity. They must have seen the first season, yet repeat the rookie mistake of voting off players who they think behave like a traitor, when the whole darn point of being a traitor is to act like a faithful.

“I know in my heart,” they say, “that he could never be a traitor” – as if it were a genetic condition, let alone a choice. Assign human beings a team, religion, party or nation, and we will not only bend over backwards to fit in but drive out with pitchforks anyone who does not. The fanatical faithful have voted off constants who are too quiet, too rude or even too intelligent – yet swallow almost any passionate assertion of authenticity.

Their language is fascinating. Players constantly say “to be honest” or “to be fair”; they have to speak “my truth”; they always “go with my gut”. They cry, as modern Britons apparently do, at the drop of a hat.

Well, the problem with basing trust on a sincere display of emotion is that sincerity is so easy to fake, as Nick Bateman infamously demonstrated on the first series of Big Brother (though exposed as a rule-breaker conspiring against his friends, he never received a single vote for expulsion).

The Traitors had Paul Gorton who would tearfully confide to the faithful that he was cracking under the pressure, or missing his family – and when alone in the diary room, laughed about how easy the others were to manipulate. “Someday,” said my mother, “that man will be in the Hague.”

Mid-series, the producers did their best to hint that Paul was a traitor by process of elimination – yet he still won votes, partly because people couldn’t bring themselves to believe they had been duped. The Traitors illustrates how greed mixes easily with innocence, how we can be persuaded to do something self-harming if we think it’s in our self-interest, which is why we keep investing in pyramid schemes, or voting Conservative.

There are signs of hope. One faithful said that she could never vote off another because “she is my best friend” – remembered that she had only known this person for a week, and added, “on this show”.

Occasionally one gets a glimmer of truth on reality TV. On the first episode of the new Love Island – yes, I watch that, too – a woman spoke about how much she had “evolved” since she was last on the show, how she had become wiser and more confident. “I was a completely different person then”, she said, “and now I’ve got new tits.” Sir Les will be spinning in his grave.