Is this the new TRAITORS?

Treachery and skulduggery as ten couples slug it out for a£250,000 prize. Plus host Stephen Mangan trying to fill Claudia Winkleman’s stylish shoes. So...

It was only a matter of time. The BBC’s game of duplicity, backstabbing and betrayal, The Traitors, was such a hit that imitations would inevitably follow. The nail-biting finale of its second run pulled in eight million viewers. Those numbers at least don’t lie.

So here comes ITV1’s take on it, complete with game plans and skulduggery. The setting for

The Fortune Hotel is a luxury Caribbean hotel in Grenada. Into this earthly paradise come ten pairs of contestants, who will act like treacherous serpents as the game goes on.

The game itself is like a tactical ‘Pass the parcel’. Each pair is given a random briefcase – one contains £250,000 in cash, another the dreaded ‘Early Check-Out’ card that sends the recipients back to the airport, while the other eight contain wads of blank paper.

The goal is to find the money and to keep it. Each evening the pairs gather and are invited to stick with the case they have or to swap it. The order they go in depends on challenges they compete in during the day.

If you win the challenge you swap last, which gives you more control.

Overseeing it all is Stephen Mangan, above centre, although it’s hard to see what he adds. Claudia Winkleman at least smeared on extra black eyeliner as she hammed up the pantomime villain act on The Traitors and it worked a treat. But old smoothie Stephen saunters in to meet the contestants as if he’s just spent half the day in the hotel spa, and actually fancied another half-hour in the mud bath.

The first part, of eight, begins with the arrival of the players, accompanied by the customary whooping and hugging. Cheeky chaps Michael and Adam say their plan is to be ‘the fun guys’ who the others will want to stick around. Self-proclaimed ‘big personalities’ Chloe and Louie are convinced they will be underestimated, while Abbie and her excitable mother Tracey, carrying an inflatable flamingo under her arm, seem ditzy, but is it an act?

The room then falls silent when Daniel announces that he’s a… barrister. ‘A lawyer, not a liar!’ he pleads, but the others are wary.

Each pair also speaks to us away from the group, so we learn more about their private strategies – and that all may not be as it seems.

For the first challenge they race around the island in minibuses to find clues to places where they then take selfies. Underwhelming, when we were promised ‘epic challenges’, although maybe there are more exciting trials to come.

That said, by the end of episode one, the money has already passed hands, one couple has packed up and gone, rifts are starting to appear… and Stephen Mangan’s tan is coming on a treat.