This article contains spoilers for ‘The Celebrity Traitors’
Something unthinkable is happening. I’ve been in denial for a week or so, but now I’m facing up to the truth: I’m not enjoying The Celebrity Traitors. I no longer fizz with excitement on Thursday and Friday evenings. Frankly, the prospect of sitting through another hour of the show feels more like homework than an end-of-week treat.
I’m bereft, not least because last year’s inaugural series was so delectable – yet I’m beginning to suspect that its dizzy heights were a fluke, largely courtesy of the inimitable Alan Carr, who took the crown for the Traitors in a thrilling finale. Could it be that without his combination of brazen mischief and butter-wouldn’t-melt ditziness, The Celebrity Traitors is basically an extended showbiz retreat, full of famous people being nice to each other in a castle? Alas, I fear, the answer is yes.
Such promise, squandered! When I first saw this series’ star-studded line up, boasting everyone from Ross Kemp to Miranda Hart, I thought we were in for a blinder – presumably, the producers did too. But in actuality, the impressive contestants are coming at a surprising cost: namely, everyone’s too famous, media trained, and aware of their public image to get stuck in.
In its defence, the opening episode did hold the potential for Carr-comparable chaos in Richard E Grant – trouble was, the pandemonium hit too early, with Grant straight-up telling his fellow contestants that he was a Traitor about five seconds after he was made one. The jaw-dropping slip up resulted in his inevitable banishment, providing an undeniably compelling beginning for a series that’s arguably long since peaked. Certainly, since Faithful Myha’la (in whom I detected a similarly wicked spark) followed Grant as the second player banished, it’s been something of a slog.
Much of the series’ inertia can be chalked up to its bizarrely reluctant crop of Traitors – besides poor Maya Jama, valiantly trying to instill some deviousness in her fellow turret-dwellers, it seems that no one has the stomach for the murders that move the show along. Take Traitor James Acaster, who proudly told new recruit Kenny on Thursday that he was playing as a faithful, and “hadn’t told a single lie yet”. That strategy might be good for his (presumably very sensitive) conscience, but it’s not fab for viewers, James.
Like Acaster, recently ousted Hannah Fry was recruited into the Traitors’ fold, but never really settled into the robes. Having attracted immediate suspicion, her strategy was to absorb rather than counter accusations, responding to them calmly and earnestly – again, very polite, but hardly thrilling. What’s more, it didn’t save her.
Both Fry and Acaster seem like lovely people, but that’s not what we’re watching for – at least, not that alone. Goodies need to be tempered by baddies, yet no one in the castle seems willing to play one – except Joe Lycett, who scuppered his own chances of becoming a Traitor by asking to be recruited and was subsequently banished.
Even the Faithful are worried about ruffling each other’s feathers. “I foolishly became convinced that Hannah wasn’t a Traitor,” said Romesh Ranganathan to James Blunt, of whom he had become briefly suspicious before Fry’s Traitor status was revealed, “I’m very sorry.” Blunt replied, “Don’t be sorry at all, it’s the game!” Now here’s a plea I never thought I’d issue – listen to James Blunt, guys, for god’s sake!
After all, in The Traitors, treachery is (literally) the name of the game. I want hubris, redemption, barefaced lies! I want Richard, Alan – or frankly, any of the civilians who have populated the show’s non-celebrity iterations, where producers can cast for genuinely idiosyncratic characters rather than star status.
At its halfway mark, this series has been hoist with its own petard – here’s hoping that Kenny lives up to his “Killer Ken” moniker bestowed by Maya. She’s currently the only person in the castle who seems to know what show she’s on.
‘The Celebrity Traitors’ continues on Thursday 22 October at 8pm on BBC One