the traitors
Rating: *****
Ding dong, evil Wilf is dead! When the most devious, deceitful, mind-bending, underhanded, and ruthless game ever shown on television reached its climax, good finally prevailed.
In the fairytale setting of a Highland castle, with torches burning around a pile of glittering gold doubloons, The Traitors (BBC1) ended happily ever after.
Hosted by Claudia Winkleman, the series saw the Strictly star cast three ‘traitors’ who secretly conspired to ‘murder’ fellow contestants known as ‘faithful’ (by evicting them from the game), without getting caught and banished themselves.
If the ‘traitors’ survived to the end, they would win the prize pool of up to £120,000, but if all three were unmasked, the remaining ‘faithful’ would share the money.
The Traitors: The most devious, deceitful, mind-blowing, clandestine and ruthless game ever shown on TV reached its climax, good finally prevailed.
Charity fundraiser Wilf, the villain who was everyone’s best friend, overplayed his hand by just a fraction. Last month, when this addictively devilish format launched, no one would have noticed. But with everyone’s paranoia tuned to the highest level of tension, his slip was enough to alert the other players to his betrayal. . . and his intrigues were exposed.
Even Wilf, 28, though he lost the entire £101,050 prize pool at the time, was excited. Guilt over betraying a group of people he had come to love was eating away at him.
‘I am free!’ he gasped himself, as the others kicked him out of the game.
Comedian Hannah, 32, call center worker Meryl, 25, and real estate agent Aaron, 24, shared the money. . . leaving the rest of us feeling remorse for other players who have been wrongfully evicted in the last four weeks.
Many have been delightfully larger than life, like Maddy, a 29-year-old receptionist and supporting actress who once appeared on EastEnders as a homeless woman and couldn’t stop talking about it.
The Traitors sees 22 people taken to a castle in Scotland. They have a chance to win up to £120,000, but three of the contestants are ‘traitors’
There was poor, sentimental Matt, a 23-year-old BMX athlete, who fell so hard for his fellow player Alex that he practically left a crater in the ground. He had no idea that Alex, 26, was also an actress, or that another of the contestants, 24-year-old professional magician Tom, was his off-screen boyfriend.
And what a goofy glee pink-haired Tom was, as he bragged that his performance art gave him mind-reading powers, before proceeding to accuse all the wrong people with spectacular arrogance.
There simply hasn’t been a new TV entertainment format as good as this in 20 years. The last time TV wizards came up with something so new and addictive, they hadn’t invented social media.
Around the turn of the millennium, two shows changed everything: Pop Idol and Big Brother. They set the pattern for all that was to come.
The Traitors is the perfect show for a different era, the era of fake news and cancellation.
Inevitably, it will need a little adjustment. The daily challenges, where players raced across Scotland collecting tokens for the prize pool, like cartoon characters in a PlayStation game, ran too long.
Perhaps the idea was to give contestants a chance to prove themselves as team players, but the best part of those segments was always the car ride home, when the backstabbing started again.
There simply hasn’t been a new TV entertainment format as good as this in 20 years.
The more the producers tried to make the challenges melodramatic—even providing a helicopter and speedboat for the finale—the more out of place they seemed. By contrast, the daily breakfasts looked edge-of-seat. They had it all: double crosses, tears, blossoming romance, and croissants.
Each morning, the players entered the buffet room one by one to find out which of their rivals had been ‘killed’ by the traitors during the night.
The other must-see item was the round table, where players would gather to hurl accusations and lie through their teeth, before deciding which of them was most likely to be a two-faced trickster and banishing them.
Almost every time, they were wrong.
It was here that Wilf played blind, drawing attention away from himself even when it meant reporting on his fellow traitors, Alyssa and Amanda.
Wilf played blind, drawing attention away from himself, even when it meant reporting on his fellow traitors.
He tried to justify his mendacity to himself, in quiet moments.
‘Would I feel guilty if I was playing a game of poker and I won 100 grand?’ he reasoned himself.
The guilt caught up with him in the end. As Hannah, Meryl, and Aaron begged him to show them why they should trust him, Wilf blurted out that if they denied him his earnings, he wouldn’t speak to any of them again.
The sound of pennies falling made an audible clank. Just for a moment, the mask of the kind, lovable, sweet old Wilf slid to the side. . . revealing his true face. Why Wilf, what big teeth you have.
I can’t wait for the next series anymore. Trust me, I love it.