Before this year’s even started, we were promised a ride like never before. Speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival in August, the BBC’s director of entertainment, Ed Havard, said that the paranoia amongst this year’s famous cohort was “off the scale”.
“The thing about this season is things happen that you didn’t think could happen on , that you have never seen before,” he said. “I can’t stop thinking about it … I really wanted to step in and go, ‘No one is actually being murdered’. I don’t want to give too much away, but there are tears in this series. I don’t think that I thought there would be this many surprises in this season… but there are.”
At the time, I took his words as an exciting teaser for one of the best series of – celebrity or otherwise – to come. But now, staring down the barrel at what has in reality been one of the most underwhelming series to date, I realise that it was more of a warning. “Be prepared,” I hear in hindsight. “Things are about to get tricky.”
By numbers, the series has been a roaring success. The opening episode is the most watched programme of the year, with an average 15.7 million viewers watching host Claudia Winkleman do her signature stomp around the inaugural Round Table and choose Maya Jama and Richard E Grant as her Traitors.
In reality, however, it’s all been a bit anticlimactic. Even the finale itself lacked a force, with the only exciting part coming when Traitor Kenny – who I had pitted as the winner – was banished at the last moment, and Faithful James Blunt tripped himself up by wrongly choosing to vote again and drawing suspicion to himself. I was of course pleased for Faithful winners Sebastian Croft and Romesh Ranganathan, who raised £83,000 for refugee charities – but it wasn’t a patch on Alan Carr’s Endgame triumph of the last celebrity series.
The problems started when Joe Lycett innocently asked Richard whether he was a Faithful or a Traitor. “A Traitor,” he responded without thought. From this moment on, the game was upended, the illusion shattered, the artifice broken. Accidentally, Richard had given his fellow Traitors carte blanche to do whatever they liked, to think of themselves as above the rules, to act bigger than the show itself.
In Thursday’s penultimate episode, we saw this narrative reach a zenith with James Acaster announcing to the Round Table that he was a Traitor before the vote had taken place. He had been reluctantly recruited in the second episode by Maya and Richard, who chose the comedian to join their ranks over Amol Rajan (who, incidentally, would have relished the opportunity to murder). Having previously refused to partake in one of the missions, it was clear that James wasn’t willing to forgo his convictions of faithfulness and honesty for the sake of a televised game.
Do I think any of these fourth wall breaking problems would ever happen in a civillian version of ? Not a chance. Normal people who aren’t used to being inside their televisions, privy to the behind-the-scenes machinations that it takes to pull off a production as complicated, as massive as wouldn’t dare to ignore producers’ instructions. Not least because their continued participation in the show – Traitor or Faithful – is the difference between winning a life-changing sum of money and going home with empty pockets.
Celebrities, however, are a law unto themselves. Not only are they used to getting their own way, to people deferring to them as the final decision-makers, to being the literal stars of the show, they also have no real incentive to play properly. Sure, they’re supposed to be playing for money to give to their chosen charity, but since we’re not even told which charities they’ve chosen and why (and rightly so – no one wants to see charities compete against one another in the name of entertainment), it can all seem a little nebulous.
Not to mention, the pressure can make them lose their temper (like Sharon Rooney in the scarecrow mission) or snap at a national treasure (like Joanne McNally did to Miranda Hart at the Round Table), not only harming their chances of winning but also putting their entire celebrity brand at risk.
So why are they there? To raise their profile? In some cases, yes: multihyphenate Sebastian Croft was relatively unknown before he was introduced in the castle. To piggyback on to the show’s success to flog a product? Well, it’s no coincidence that James Blunt has a new album out. There are a handful of celebrities who have a real respect for the show and are there to see if they really have what it takes to sniff out a Traitor or murder Faithfuls by night. It’s these celebrities – the Michael Sheens, the Romesh Ranganathans, the Miranda Harts – who make almost salvageable.
But among them, there’s a cohort of celebs who simultaneously take the game too seriously and not seriously enough. They let the backstabbing and investigating get in their heads, then decide to throw their toys out of the pram when it gets too much; they decide it’s “just a game”.
The first iteration of was a triumph – but it was also a fluke. As the first famous people in there, Alan Carr and co were unaware of just how much it would bolster their profiles and therefore played without fear. This year, however, the success of that first outing has loomed large – and the second batch of celebs has failed to live up to those expectations.
The BBC has already confirmed that there’s going to be a third series of The Celebrity Traitors. It’s a huge mistake. As more and more celebrities play the game their way instead of by the rules, the show is only going to get weaker, less authentic, more banal. Time to give our attention back to the people who made a hit in the first place: the normies. For this is a game that requires its players to be ruthless, to screw each other over, to fight to the death. No one does that better than the Great British public.