Don’t talk to me for the rest of 2022 – unless it’s about The Traitors-Shaun Kitchener-Entertainment – Metro

The Traitors is high-camp (Picture: BBC/Studio Lambert Associates/Mark Mainz)

Imagine playing the childhood game Wink Murder as a grown adult and it gets so intense that you’re sobbing, shouting, earnestly yelling things like ‘I am not making accusations without HARD! EVIDENCE!’

And to top it all off you’re playing it with complete strangers in an epic Scottish castle.

Add a gleeful Claudia Winkleman and exchange Wink Murder for classic social deduction game Mafia, and you pretty much have The Traitors, the BBC’s new hyper-dramatic reality competition show.

Oh, guys, it’s unhinged.

The soundtrack is epic. Different programme segments have names like ‘The Murdering Hour’ and ‘The Banishment’, while the elimination process feels like The Weakest Link on poppers.

And needless to say, je suis obsessed.

It’s been a strong year for reality competition shows. 

The Great Pottery Throwdown had us sobbing with Keith Brymer Jones; Channel 4’s The Bridge: Race To A Fortune was a severely under-rated cross between Survivor and Big Brother with bonus AJ Odudu; and RuPaul’s Drag Race saved itself from growing fatigue with a stellar US ‘civilian’ series and an absolute romp of an all-winners All Stars.

But 2022’s best reality competition show may well have been saved for last.

It’s basically giving me everything my sweet, departed The Circle delivered in spades (Picture: BBC/Studio Lambert Associates/Llara Plaza)

The Traitors is high-camp. You’ll know that as soon as you see the trailer, with Claudia doing a delicious ‘shhh’ pose in a hooded cape, like a cross between a popstar and those weird creatures who shout ‘utini!’ in Star Wars.

Dramatic, addictive, and downright rude with cliffhangers… the show is full of contestants who seem to have forgotten they’re on a gameshow and genuinely think it’s a matter of life or death.

It’s basically giving me everything my sweet, departed The Circle delivered in spades; which is leaving a load of isolated strangers to play a simple yet somehow extremely complex game, in which they slowly lose all grip on reality and succumb to paranoia, double-crossing, ropey alliances, and saying things like: ‘I’ve million-percent made a friend for life’ after two days.

Airing on three consecutive nights a week for the next few weeks, it’s already a word-of-mouth smash that feels like one of those classic water-cooler hits; the kind of show that you could just talk about, endlessly, for hours.

Who do you like? Who do you loathe? Are you backing The Traitors? Are you rooting for The Faithful? How iconic was it when those two faux-chivalrous blokes got eliminated after about fifty seconds?

If it sounds like I’m talking total gibberish – well you’re right, but here’s a summary.

Twenty-plus contestants are shoved together in a castle. 

At the behest of Claudia, three are secretly told they will be Traitors. Almost every night, the Traitors meet up when everyone else is in bed to decide who to bump off (that’s ‘evict’ or ‘send home’ in old money reality-TV-speak, but only words like ‘kill’ and ‘murder’ are extra enough for this show).

The following day, the surviving non-Traitors (the ‘Faithful’) have an opportunity to get their own back at a tense conference held over a big round table, and throw accusations around as to who they think the Traitors are. 

It gets put to a vote, and one person is banished – revealing whether they are in fact a Traitor, or if the group has inadvertently eliminated one of their own.

The Faithful must find and eliminate all the Traitors before the Traitors make it to the final and help themselves to the big cash prize (which they’re all helping to build up by way of fun daytime challenges).

It’s juicy, emotional and extremely tense – but just like all the best reality TV, underneath all the heightened hijinks it feels like a fascinating social experiment.

Across these first few episodes, it’s been interesting to see the traits and behaviours that the Faithful have deemed to be ‘suspicious’.

We’ve seen, for example, 59-year-old school worker Fay being not only falsely singled out as a potential Traitor right off the bat, but branded the most ‘ruthless’ and the most ‘two-faced’ based on very little evidence. 

The Faithful must find and eliminate all the Traitors before the Traitors make it to the final and help themselves to the big cash prize (which they’re all helping to build up by way of fun daytime challenges) (Picture: BBC/Studio Lambert Associates/Llara Plaza)

Fay is one of very few Black contestants in the game, and she seems perfectly comfortable in herself – leading many to wonder if it was a case of people’s unconscious biases coming to the fore.

With other contestants of colour Aisha and Imran being eliminated early-on for various reasons, it’s certainly a possible factor – especially when you consider the fact that sweet Welsh white lady Amanda has attracted absolutely no suspicion, despite being the most ruthless Traitor of the lot.

We’ve also seen young Aaron, who is a sweetheart, be accused of duplicity, and thanks to his Diary Room-esque confessionals, we know that some of the traits fellow contestant John has been suspicious of are a result of Aaron’s ADHD.

So seeing him have a full-on panic attack when he stood (falsely) accused of being a Traitor, and then seeing John prickle even more and accuse Aaron of faking it, has been both uncomfortable and fascinating to watch (I suspect it will have been hard for John to watch back as well).

Plus, it’s doubly fun to have your allegiances constantly switching. Do I want the goodies – i.e. the Faithful – to root out the bad apples, or do I want the Traitors to get away with murder?

Call me Taylor Swift, because I’m backing those anti-heroes all the way – especially our silently savage queen Amanda.

But I also find myself cheering for Faithfuls like author Ivan, who has faced incredibly loud scrutiny from fired-up magician Tom; 72-year-old Andrea, who I suspect (OK, I hope) has a more ruthless side that we are yet to see; and below-radar Rayan, who might just be playing a blinder in trying to sneak into the final with barely a whisper.

Look, in case it’s not obvious, I could talk about it for hours and hours.

Just take my word for it, watch the show if you aren’t already, and come at me with your own thoughts, theories, and favourite pieces of Claudia knitwear.

It’s an utterly ridiculous piece of melodrama – but it’s hands-down one of the best TV shows of the year.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk. 

Share your views in the comments below.

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