The Traitors has become a TV phenomenon. With millions of fans tuning into the current series of The Celebrity Traitors, it seems the format is as popular as ever.
Will the scheming Traitors or the seemingly hapless Faithfuls get the upper hand? We’ll have to wait until 6 November to find out.
The show has achieved iconic status, thanks to the mendacious plotting, the gorgeous scenery, the bizarre challenges, and the hugely emotional round tables.
Behind the scenes, it is a triumph of ingenious creativity, complex logistical planning, and some excellent knitwear.
The Traitors, which first appeared on BBC One in November 2022, is based on a TV show from The Netherlands, De Verraders (The Traitors in Dutch).
Dutch TV has a tradition of exporting entertainment formats to the UK, including Big Brother, The Voice, Deal or No Deal, Stars in Their Eyes and The Generation Game.
The original Dutch series was itself inspired by a gruesome historical tale. Marc Pos, who created the show, said the idea originally came to him after reading a book about a 17th-century Dutch shipwreck.
The Batavia, the flagship of the Dutch East India Company, had been wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos Islands near Australia in 1629. Around 300 of the 341 people on board made it ashore. When the ship’s captain sailed off in search of help, he left in charge his deputy, Jeronimus Cornelisz. But Cornelisz had been planning a mutiny, and he and his followers began murdering any remaining survivors loyal to the captain.
Pos explained to GQ last year: “When [the ship’s passengers] crashed on the island, they didn’t know who was in favour of the mutiny or not. They all lied to each other, because they didn’t trust anyone.”
If you haven’t been watching, the rules are… not exactly simple. Think wink murder, crossed with Big Brother, but scripted by Agatha Christie and styled by Liberace.
Essentially, 22 contestants are placed in a castle, where they take part in a series of challenges to build a prize pot of up to £120,000. But some of the group are appointed Traitors, whose job it is to murder the others, known as Faithfuls who, in turn, must try and work out who the traitors are and banish them at a nightly roundtable meeting.
If a Traitor is left still standing at the end of the series, they take the entire prize pot. If not, it is divided among any surviving Faithfuls.
Pos’ original idea was for a series called The Mutineers, set onboard a ship, with contestants forced to jump overboard upon elimination. But the idea would have been prohibitively expensive, so it was changed to The Traitors, taking place in a castle.
Even then, broadcasters were slow to pick up the idea, as Pos told GQ: “I pitched it for five years, and nobody wanted to buy it. I probably pitched it 40 or 50 times to broadcasters [in the Netherlands] – some of them said to me, ‘Oh no, not The Traitors again’.”
However, once the idea was picked up, it quickly took flight. The show now has more than 20 versions across the world.
The Traitors has proved a smash hit in the UK, thanks in no small part to the arch presenting style of host Claudia Winkleman. But she initially turned down the opportunity to front the show. She explained to Radio Times that she didn’t want to film in Scotland, away from her kids.
“Kate [Phillips, BBC Director of Unscripted] asked me to do it. And they said, ‘It’s three weeks in Scotland.’ I've been to the countryside twice, and I just never leave London. And I was like, ‘Well, thank you so much, but like, no.’ They said, ‘Why don’t you just watch the Dutch version and then decide?’
“So I watched the Dutch version and, I mean, nobody got fed. I didn’t brush my teeth. I was so obsessed that then I had to phone Kate and I said, ‘I’ve booked a train, I’m going to Scotland now.’ She was like, ‘Filming doesn’t start for months.’”
Along with her amped-up presenting, Winkleman has been praised for her sartorial style, featuring tartan, tweeds, knitwear, capes, roll-necks and fingerless gloves.
She works with stylist Sinead McKeefry (whose clients have included Fearne Cotton and Billie Piper) to come up with a daytime outfit and a round-table outfit for every episode – so 24 looks for each series.
According to an article on the Royal Television Society’s website, knitwear brand Mr Mittens sold out of every size of their red balloon-sleeved jumpers within hours of it appearing in an episode of the second series.
Winkleman herself is self-effacing about her trend-setting outfits, telling the Radio Times: “I’m dressing like Princess Anne mixed with Ronnie Corbett.”
Another of the undoubted stars of the show is Ardross Castle, the magnificent Scottish Baronial pile set amidst the stunning Highlands.
The castle was built by Sir Alexander Matheson, a businessman and MP, in the mid-19th century. After his death, the estate was sold to Charles William Dyson Perrins, whose grandfather William Perrins had been responsible (along with business partner John Wheeley Lea) for creating Worcestershire Sauce.
Today, the castle is owned by the McTaggart family, who rent out the property as a wedding venue and conference centre. It is estimated to be worth almost £17m.
Instead, every night, after a long (sometimes 16-hour) day of filming, they are driven 45-minutes back to their hotel near Inverness Airport, the 130-room Courtyard by Marriott.
They are not allowed to fraternise there, and are only left alone by security when they are safely back in their rooms.
At least the tension is broken by those heavenly-looking breakfasts of pastries, fresh fruit and smoothies that are laid out every day.
Not so, according to season one’s Ivan Brett, who tweeted in January 2024: “The rest of the food was actually delicious and varied, everyone’s diets and tastes accounted for. But the breakfast was set dressing and set dressing is not tasty, it’s stale.”
Apparently the contestants have already had toast and porridge at the hotel.
After the intensity of the round table, contestants normally adjourn to the castle bar. But Wilf Webster revealed that nobody is allowed more than two drinks – and they may even struggle to get that.
“They said two but they [the drinks] always disappeared after one. They don’t want us to mess up and get drunk and accidentally do something,” he revealed.
Contestants are likely to be away filming for a couple of weeks, which means time away from their day jobs. So they are compensated by the producers, according to series one contestant Aaron Evans, speaking on a YouTube Q&A.
“They don’t technically pay you, they subsidise what you would have got for work with the show, it’s roughly like £100 a day. It’s not that much... but it’s definitely worth it,” he said.
Mind you, as one of the three winners of series one, Evans received £33,000 of prize money.
In series three the prize pot was £94,600 and was split between the two Faithful winners – Leanne Quigley and Jake Brown.
Everyone has their own theories about the best way to win the show, ranging from staying quiet to being vocal, building alliances to, um, pretending to be Welsh. But it turns out that the best way to win the series is to be a Traitor.
Of the series that have been shown around the world so far, 31 have been won by Traitors, and only 17 by Faithfuls.
The Traitors has certainly struck a chord with UK viewers, with an impressive 5.4 million tuning in to watch the first episode of series three.
The show’s growth, and the scale of its impact, can also be seen from the number of people applying to take part. The first series saw 1,500 people apply. By the second, that figure had increased to 40,000.
But by the third series, the number of applications had soared to an extraordinary 300,000.
Both Wilf Webster and Aaron Evans have confirmed that the producers never try to influence what happens on the show.
Webster says: “We were so lucky... We had no direction or anything like that and it just felt so natural. We forgot about the cameras.”
Evans confirms: “We were never pushed into the drama, it just happens. The producers would never control anything, we had complete control over what we said and what we did.”
In a genre notorious for TV fakery, it is reassuring to know that the Machiavellian skullduggery and dishonesty involved in the series is in front of, rather than behind, the cameras.
(Hero image credit: BBC/Studio Lambert/CodyBurridge)
The Celebrity Traitors is on BBC One on Wednesdays and Thursdays. Catch up and past series are available on BBC iPlayer.
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