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Fame-hungry show-offs & over-familiar format mean The Traitors has gone same way as all successful reality shows

23 hours ago News Room Comments Off on Fame-hungry show-offs & over-familiar format mean The Traitors has gone same way as all successful reality shows

TV’S most overblown game of blink murder began with 22 excitables all screeching the same three deathly words, as they arrived at The Traitors’ HQ in the Highlands.

“We’ve gone through the gate. Oh my God.”

The Traitors BBC cast in front of a castle.
Fame-hungry show-offs & over-familiar format mean The Traitors has gone same way as all successful reality shows
The Traitors contestants seated around a circular table.
BBC
I’m clearly going to have to suck it up anyway as there are five million happy viewers and another seven hours of this series to go[/caption]

“It’s the castle. Oh my God.”

“It’s Claudia. Oh my God.”

“It’s the library,” for crying out loud.

“Oh my God.”

And so it continued, at every significant and insignificant part of their tour, accompanied by all the usual hand-flapping histrionics we’ve come to expect from TV contestants, and even some weeping.

A sight and sound that should chill the bones of every senior BBC1 executive, but won’t.

For this is a process that happens to all successful ­reality shows.

Point of insanity

They start with a fairly ­ordinary and likeable bunch of competitors and no sooner have a couple of them risen to the dizzy heights of Celebrity MasterChef (Diane Carson) and Dancing On Ice (Mollie Pearce), than it’s suddenly over-run with fame-chasing exhibitionists who are performing entirely for their own benefit and eventually ruin the fun for everyone.

You see the early signs quite clearly, this series, with ­Claudia Winkleman’s original choice of Traitors: Opera- ­singing “wild child” pensioner Linda; foghorning Armani, the queen of the “oh-my-Godders”; and Minah the Scouser who, for name potential alone, should be forced into an arranged marriage with fellow contestant Dan Bird.

It’s even more obvious, though, on the side of the Faithfuls where, along with three actors — Jack, Elen and Francesca — we also have: ­Millionaire businessman Nathan; Charlotte, who’s ­pretending to be Welsh rather than admit the horrific truth she’s actually from ­London; crybaby student ­Freddie; and career diplomat Alexander, “an expert in ­conflict resolution”, whose last job must have been negotiating Keir Starmer’s Chagos islands deal, as he would’ve talked himself off the entire show within 15 minutes of the start but for a last-minute rule change.

As noisy, excited and full of their intuitive brilliance as they mostly appear to be, the conversations they produce are circular and repetitive to the point of insanity, from a ­neutral point of view.

“You’re a Traitor.”

“No I’m not.”

“I think you are.”

“But I’m not . . . ”

It’s a tougher job than non-converts might have been led to believe, then, to give a toss about anything that’s happening in that castle and one that I’m simply not up to as my relationship with The Traitors has changed from detached bafflement at its success to an active dislike of the show.

Claudia Winkleman in a fluffy coat and furry boots.
BBC
What really vexes me about it are the obsessive and slightly creepy updates about Claudia’s wardrobe[/caption]

It doesn’t help, of course, that The Traitors has joined that small band of shows that are so full of their own ­significance they refuse to give out preview tapes to journalists, presumably because the BBC thinks the secrets ­contained therein are just too cosmically important to risk blowing.

What really vexes me about it, though, are the emotionally incontinent contestants, the over-familiar and bought-in Dutch format, the preening self-regard for its diversity and inclusion, that doesn’t extend to including any white male over the age of 40, and the obsessive and slightly creepy updates about Claudia’s wardrobe which its most ardent fans seem to think all adds up to great television.

Suck it up

It doesn’t, obviously.

Truly great television, like Mr Bates Vs The Post Office or Clarkson’s Farm, has the ability to change the medium, minds and eventually the country.

All The Traitors is doing is carrying the torch for Big Brother until the next reality fad arrives.

But I’m clearly going to have to suck it up anyway as there are five million happy viewers, another seven hours of this series to go and the grindingly inevitable celebrity version to follow.

Oh my God.

Random irritations

BBC2’s Lawrence Of Arabia wannabe Simon Reeve imagining his ridiculous keffiyeh head scarf makes him look like anything other than Florence of Suburbia.

ITV drama Playing Nice getting ­hopelessly lost in its own legal tangles and unsympathetic characters. The ever-careless or illiterate Good Morning Britain caption writer who told viewers it’s illegal to send “expicit” images.

And Jack O’Connell’s performance as SAS Rogue Heroes’ Paddy Mayne reaching the stage where it’s so bloody annoying I actually want the Germans to shoot him. Schnell.

ON HUNT TO FIND BRAINS

Denise Welch and Lincoln Townley standing by a railway track.
Colin Hutton / Channel 4
Denise Welch and Lincoln Townley on Celebrity Hunted[/caption]

ENCOURAGING news from one of the Celebrity Hunted surveillance team, who can confirm: “A positive identification of Denise Welch and Lincoln Townley.”

Those two, however, are among the slightly easier hits on this series of the Channel 4 reality show.

The hard stuff begins when he has to try to confirm a positive identification of podcasting obscurities Zeze Millz and David Whitely, or the two blonde soap stars, Danielle Harold and Kimberly Hart-Simpson, who hunter-in-chief Ray Howard has referred to as “the last of the Targaryens”, for want of having the slightest clue as to their real identity.

As luck would have it, though, Channel 4 also booked Strictly’s big-hitters Kai Widdrington and Giovanni Pernice who, when this show was filmed back in May 2023, must have thought being relentlessly pursued by a pack of shark-eyed obsessives would be a bit of a laugh rather than the way of life it’s become with Amanda Abbington on his case 24/7.

In terms of profile, obviously, it’s added hugely to the intrigue of the series, even though I take nothing that happens on Celebrity Hunted at face value given the near misses are just too frequent and convenient to be in any way credible.

But there’s no doubt the first show of the run was very entertainingly edited and benefited from the fact monotonal Lisa Theaker has been replaced by Ray Howard, who has a sense of humour and one other crucial gift that became apparent when the chief said he was looking for “Duncan James and Christine McGuinness intelligence.”

Optimism.

Great sporting insights

DAN DAWSON: “We’re waiting for the ignition to stop starting.”
Polly James: “Congratulations Luke Littler, we were all on the edge of your seat.”

And Jamie Redknapp: “This back four played together on Thursday but they’ve never played together.”

(Compiled by Graham Wray)

Unexpected morons in the bagging area

THE Weakest Link, Romesh Ranganathan: “What word for a female sheep sounds like the 21st letter of the alphabet?”

Mark Clattenburg: “T.”

Romesh: “In symbols, which purple flowering plant is the national emblem of Scotland and also the emblem of ­Scottish rugby union?”

Mark Clattenburg: “The rose.”

Romesh: “Which orange root vegetable has a name that sounds like the word used to measure the purity of gold?”

Tim Vine: “Swede.”

Celebrity Mastermind, Clive Myrie: “Which US state has the two-letter postal abbreviation AZ?”

Charley Marlowe: “Australia.”

TV GOLD

THE distractingly weird backing dancers, like the hamburger accompanying “Teeth”, who have become the real stars of The Masked Singer.

Denise Welch brilliantly ­summing up her plight, with husband Lincoln Townley, on C4’s Celebrity Hunted: “If we go up to him, he’ll go, ‘Why are Harry Hill and Judi Dench ­running across the corn field to me?’ ”

And the superb cast of BBC1’s WWII series SAS Rogue Heroes, who’ve turned the script into something wonderful. With the exception, obviously, of Jack “Paddy Mayne” O’Connell, who’s turned every line into what sounds more like Colin Murray barking out the Lord’s Prayer.

Lookalike of the week

Head-and-shoulders shots of a woman and a man.
Charlotte off The Traitors and Gareth Southgate

THIS week’s winner is Charlotte off The Traitors and Gareth Southgate.

Emailed in by Dave Worrall.

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