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The Traitors – Set aside your preconceptions and give it a go

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The odd “serving” of Come Dine With Me or “stopover” at Four in a Bed (SWIDT?) aside, I normally can’t stomach reality shows and gave this a miss when it showed last month.

Having heard nothing but praise from friends whose televisual recommendations are normally pretty good, I gave it a go and a brilliant, hugely addictive show it is, too.

PLot basically involves 22 contestants in a Scottish castle joining forces to take on increasingly difficult challenges to try and earn themselves a share in a possible £120K jackpot.

The only fly in the ointment is that three of the competitors are “traitors” whose job it is to grab the loot for themselves by “murdering” the rest of the group (called “faithful”) one victim every night they’re in the castle. The faithfuls have their shot at identifying and getting rid of the traitors at nightly banishment sessions.

The amount of mind-fucking that goes on makes for must binge telly.

Give it a go, you’ll be hooked within the first episode.

Above describes the UK version. Not seen the celeb-driven US version yet but having devoured the UK one in three nights I defiintely will

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Comments

  1. Despite the near universal praise this show has received it’s my perception of the ‘amount of mind-fucking that goes on’ which puts me off. There’s enough suspicion and paranoia in my life already without seeking it out for leisure. I was even deeply uncomfortable in the episode of the last series of Taskmaster when the viewers knew that John Kearns was on a mission to sabotage the task without his team mates knowing.

  3. I concur about the U.K. version. I don’t watch reality TV at all, stumbled on this and found myself addicted. The last 20 mins was the most compelling TV of last year! Seriously!

    I have shared my “guilty pleasure” with family and friends who all lapped it up as well

  7. Awful shite telly, I thought. My brother enthusiastically recommended it to me so I gave the first episode a go but couldn’t go any further.

    I wrote a song a while back called Crying on Camera. The first verse goes:
    Everybody, look at me
    I want the world to see
    I’ve got no dignity
    I’m on reality TV
    And I’m crying on camera

    Watching this shite made got me playing that song again. So that’s nice.

  9. I have mentioned on here before that I am an avid boardgamer, and just heard this being discussed on a boardgaming podcast this morning. For this show, they’ve taken mechanisms from popular social deduction games, which usually involve a traitor/traitors of some sort. It’s a mechanism with lots of interesting variations, so hopefully the show builds on that.

    That being said, I would never actually watch the show!

  10. It’s good – especially on catch up. It hits the spot where our house can coincide on a programme (15 year old kids and mature adults). Surprisingly rare.

    It does cliffhangers, twists and the journey thing well. Claudia Winkleman is also very good – although I am distracted by her fringe and the concern that she will need to move on from that hair style soon.

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