Celebrity Traitors final review: Treachery and tears make for TV perfection

Finally, we have a winner, and it’s watch-in-real-time, unstreamed, un-binged TV. It’s a rare and beautiful thing in 2025 to sit staring at the screen, knowing millions around the country are sitting on similar edges of seats, waiting to find out which of the five remaining players will emerge triumphant of the Celebrity Traitors.

And what did we get? With only five left from the original 19 who entered the castle - 2 Traitors, 3 Faithful - it was all about alliances. Joe and Nick were in such cahoots working out how to oust the others, I spent the first hour wishing one of them had turned out to be a Traitor. Instead, the second best moment of the night came another way, with Nick ultimately joining the others in banishing Joe – could you hear your neighbours shouting at the screen?!

That was the warm-up for the best, biggest twist of all, when Alan Carr came through as the final, solitary traitor left standing, telling the others, almost sadly, "I am, and have always been, a Traitor." Nick collapsed, David sighed, Alan cried and the sweet Faithful pair ended up comforting him in his moment of guilty triumph. It was perfect, must-watch TV.

Following another effortlessly successful daytime mission that proved the celebs to be far better at physical challenges than they have ever been at unearthing Traitors, it was all about the penultimate Round Table. You know a show has fulfilled its promise of surprising us when one of the country’s premier historians is reduced to role of "useful idiot", but that’s where David Olusoga found himself – stuck in the middle as Faithfuls Joe and Nick battled to outwit Alan and Cat.

All that classical training and scholarship served Olusoga not – ultimately, he just didn’t have the skills, or possibly stomach, to either betray or sniff out the treachery around him, which doesn’t really reflect that badly on him, I suppose. Instead, Joe’s strength of purpose saw Cat disposed of, but that same zeal proved his undoing at the very last Round Table, as Alan used all his powers of persuasion to unsettle others’ doubts in the big man, and clear his way to victory.

So now, after five weeks and nine episodes, the ravens have left the castle, the drawbridge has been pulled up, the last of the faithful banished and the traitors unearthed. There have been some prize moments along the way: Celia Imrie’s wind proving she has a pro’s comedic timing in all things; Claire Balding’s disastrous attempt to participate in not commentate on a sporting challenge; the unprecedented nation-stopping Round Table stalemate between David and Mark Bonnar. All will be remembered, but none so powerfully as the two moments that bookended the series – both starring Alan.

The first came when the third Traitor was initially unearthed, and even his fellow conspirators laughed out loud; the second when he was finally revealed to the Faithful, a moment set to become a nation-sweeping meme. The Chatty Man’s presence as a giggling assassin in plain sight set the tone for the whole series, and Alan’s charm could explain why the faithful were jaw-droopingly inept in unearthing the Traitors in their midst, and also why they were so quick to forgive him for his treachery. There he stood - emotional, funny, no longer deadly – in a fitting end to a series that has confounded any fears a celebrity version would dilute the simple human premise - betray or be betrayed - at the heart of it. What will we all do now?

Read more:

• BBC confirms release window for The Traitors season 4 in eerie teaser
• These are the 10 stars who should be on a potential Celebrity Traitors season 2

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