January can only mean one thing: The Traitors is back. For those of you who haven’t been initiated into this cloaks-and-daggers drama, the premise is simple: the traitors attempt to remove players by ‘murdering’ them, while the faithfuls try to work out who the traitors are. Each night the group votes someone off after a round-table discussion. It’s real-life Cluedo, with extra high-camp theatrics – hooded robes, crossed-out portraits, handwritten messages, crocodile tears and croissants in the breakfast room – all under the watchful fringe of Claudia Winkleman.
The show lives and dies on the likeability of its cast and their relationships
The first two series were an unexpected success. In our fragmented streaming era, when people rarely watch the same shows at the same time, The Traitors brought back event TV and excited water-cooler discussions. Reality television shows nowadays shamelessly promote unrealistic, unattainable impressions of modern life, think the sparkling homes of Selling Sunset or the buff bodies of Love Island. The Traitors offered something different, something more akin to the original series of Big Brother: a sociological experiment and crash course in human behaviour. The viewers, smugly omniscient, can watch the chaos unfold, enjoying the back-stabbings and betrayals while playing the sofa psychologist. All the pomp has led to some highly meme-able moments, like Diane drinking fizzy rosé from a poisoned chalice, or the ‘rail replacement service’ sign on a horse-and-carriage that arrives three days late.
Another reason for the show’s popularity was that, in the first two series, the cast never appeared fame-hungry. They seemed more interested in the fun of playing a parlour game than hoping their screen time would be a launch pad for brand deals, Instagram followers or a semi-successful podcast. Yet the show has become a victim of its own success. Series three feels different. There are still the same political power plays, but the contestants are too worried about self-preservation, and so the format no longer works.
Take the challenges. In previous series, they were designed to build teamwork and camaraderie; happy families by day, assassins by night. Now they encourage division, and players often go for shields – which give them immunity from murder – rather than taking the money. The aim of the game has therefore become about survival, and staying on as long as possible; as one player put it, ‘I’m playing selfishly in a selfish game.’
This might seem fair enough, but the show lives and dies on the likeability of its cast and their relationships. This year there are plenty of entertaining eccentrics: an ex-soldier masquerading as a Barbie-like nail technician; a priest who says she loves a good murder; a Londoner who, inexplicably, is putting on a Welsh accent (and I imagine will eventually be outed, as she is not exactly Meryl Streep).
Yet the inevitable groupthink means their only strategy is to get rid of anyone who is vaguely intelligent, and therefore might, in theory, be an effective traitor. This anti-intellectual agenda means we have already lost Yin, who had a PhD in human communication; the savvy translator Ellen, who correctly guessed the traitors this year would be strong vocal women; and the doctor Kas, who was singled out simply for being a medic. The most successful and influential contestants are either those who blend into the background, or those who compete to be the main character, swaying others based on vibes.
The attacks on Kas also felt particularly mean-spirited and personal, and he admitted he felt ostracised and isolated from the group. In previous series the nastiest anyone got was criticising someone’s roast dinners. Despite the orchestrated treachery and Machiavellian dealings, there were no hard feelings; the show maintained the sense that despite the melodrama, it was all fun and games. Now, though, it feels tainted by cynicism. There is no incentive for the faithfuls to work together to uncover the traitors, because all that matters is reaching the finale, and so the two groups have become indistinguishable.
Logic, at times tenuous in previous series, also seems to have disappeared. Faithfuls continually parrot that suspects have characteristics that would make them a good traitor, without realising that they all do: that’s precisely why they are on the show. It leads to a scattergun approach, lacking any subtlety or nuance. Intelligence and insight are no longer seen as potential assets, but something inherently suspicious, and it makes the show less fun to watch when there is so little to analyse. A degree of frustration from the audience is all part of the fun, but we know that we’re being chaperoned towards a particular endgame.
All is not lost. We can still enjoy the histrionics, Claudia Winkleman’s knitwear, the way none of the contestants can spell each other’s names. It is still an entertaining show, but it is a shame it is not a much more clever one.
Comments