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There’s so much to worry about in the UK at the moment. The pound has been in the bin since Brexit, and we’re all worried sick about justice for the wrongly accused subpostmasters. And yet, despite millennia of disparate factions, of opposing political views, of crippling socioeconomic disparity, one worry has managed to unite the entire kingdom: whether Diane—a former physical-education teacher with a weapons-grade ginger bob—has been handed a poison chalice full of fizzy rosé on The Traitors.
When it’s cold in January, our little island gathers round the TV like ants to jam, our cockles warmed by its gentle LED light. And this year’s jammiest offering is the second season of BBC’s The Traitors, a show in which 22 strangers—known as Faithfuls—compete to win up to £120K (or about the average customer spend at The Row). But among the group are a number of secretly assigned Traitors who conspire to quote-unquote murder the Faithfuls, and any Traitors left at the end of the run get the entire cash prize. There’s a daily team task to build the prize fund, and each evening the contestants gather at the Round Table, where they have to banish (vote off) whoever they all agree is a Traitor. (They are astonishingly bad at this.) This is the reasonably simple format that has taken our nation by storm.
The contestants gathered in the Scottish castle are the palpitating heart of the show. The UK’s is the only global iteration of the show not to cast known reality-TV personalities. (The second season of the American version, on the other hand, includes the likes of Survivor’s Parvati Shallow and Bravo veteran Phaedra Parks.) This means that nobody is obviously trying to build an influencer platform, which is nice, but the casting is also a brutal reminder that Britain is chockablock with ultimately quite grating eccentrics who think they’re incredibly smart. Last season saw a completely innocent woman (who planned to use the winnings to buy a second arm) banished in the first episode; this season they’ve murdered a psychic and banished a kindly war veteran with one leg. We secretly love pantomime villain Paul (denying this to yourself is harmful), who, when asked to describe himself in three words, chose cruel. At one frankly bizarre point, a sheep ended up saying, “I am or amn’t” out loud. (You really had to be there.) But the biggest twist to date was the maternity reveal (“So it turns out Diane’s my mum”), and now the aforementioned, much-loved, grave-robbing gazelle could well be show murdered in front of our eyes today.
The Round Table gatherings are a giant dartboard of random accusations, as players sling Traitor allegations like so much mud. Nearly every player, weighed down by hours of either compulsive lying or sleuthing, begins to act differently, and in turn these recalibrations of character are pounced upon as Traitor tells. No passing comment goes unscrutinized as the collective paranoia deepens. It’s a sickening and perverse joy to watch normal people descend into guarded disbelievers, mistrustful of their peers. As a viewer, the daily tasks are fun and yet insufferable. Like teenage foreplay, you’re desperate to fast-forward to the good bit. Watching a team build as a small faction actively destroys it is a rare treat, like finding a fiver every afternoon—but we do need a little respite from the finger-pointing. All Round Table and no tasks makes Jack…have heart palps.
Towering head and shoulders above the contestants is veteran prime-time TV presenter Claudia Winkleman. More fringe than face, she’s a jambalaya of boots and gloves and cabled wool, a sort of horror-movie riding instructor peeking out from a giant knit foreskin. She’s very tanned for the bleak midwinter, and though it’s not for me to assess a woman’s tanning limit, I heard at university that she literally slept in a tanning bed. She is the silly and serious face of the incredibly silly and serious show. That juxtaposition of aggressive, accusatory, solemn sleuthing coupled with the “is this deliberately funny?” shots of people lunging and taking bubble baths in their bedrooms is the key to the utterly high camp of 2024’s favorite game show. (Oh, and have I mentioned the midnight meetings with torches and cloaks?) The seriousness of both the contestants and the audience is ultimately so unserious.
Yet the true beauty of the show is the question we inevitably ask ourselves: What sort of Traitor would I be? Quiet and conniving? Playing docile and dumb? Loud in a way that no Traitor could possibly be? One of the original Traitors stumbled at a Round Table and was swiftly turned to ash by her fellow secret agents. Could you do that too? Could you be that nimble in real time? As the cloaked Jekylls retreat to their Hyde-away turret to scheme, we’re captivated by how dastardly your average civilian can be, how bulldozingly savage their strategies, how bareface their lies. And we’re all wondering if we could do the same. Not necessarily for the money—I’m not sure you become a Traitor just for the cash—but for the thrill. The Traitors is a show less about who wins or who loses but who dares.